hosts - reachable hosts

This file contains information about reachable (known) hosts. Each entry consists of a line in the following format:

host_address  host_name  aliases  #comment

The file contains the following standard entry:

127.0.0.1       localhost local                 # loopback

Entries by systems support are only required here if an application uses the gethostent() function to get the host names and addresses.

This information can be obtained via DNS or BCAM using the gethostbyname(), gethostbyaddr(), getipnodebyname() and getipnodebyaddr() functions.