protocols(5) BSD 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.
4.2 Berkeley Distribution June 5, 1993 4.2 Berkeley Distribution