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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 infor-mation. information.
     mation.

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