PROTOCOLS(5)                  File Formats Manual                 PROTOCOLS(5)

NAME
     protocols – protocol name data base

DESCRIPTION
     The protocols file contains information regarding the known protocols
     used in the DARPA Internet.  For each protocol a single line should be
     present with the following information:

           official protocol name
           protocol number
           aliases

     Items are separated by any number of blanks and/or tab characters.  A
     ``#'' indicates the beginning of a comment; characters up to the end of
     the line are not interpreted by routines which search the file.

     Protocol names may contain any printable character other than a field
     delimiter, newline, or comment character.

INTERACTION WITH DIRECTORY SERVICES
     Processes generally find protocol records using one of the getprotoent(3)
     family of functions.  On Mac OS X, these functions interact with the
     DirectoryService(8) daemon, which reads the /etc/protocols file as well
     as searching other directory information services to determine protocol
     name and number information.

FILES
     /etc/protocols

SEE ALSO
     getprotoent(3), DirectoryService(8)

HISTORY
     The protocols file format appeared in 4.2BSD.

BSD 4.2                          June 5, 1993                          BSD 4.2