Internet addresses

A TCP/IP program uses a socket address encapsulated in a TInetAddr object. This is the expected form for passing address information when using RSocket and RHostResolver for TCP/IP. A TInetAddr object stores the IP address and port of a socket.

A program may have to handle IP addresses represented in other formats as well:

• as a dotted-decimal string (for example, ‘194.129.2.54’) stored in a descriptor, such as might be entered by a user in a dialog. TInetAddr offers functions to convert such a representation back and forth.

• as a unsigned 32-bit integer: this is the usual binary representation of an IP address. This can be used to initialise a TInetAddr through the relevant constructor.

• as 4 integers forming a dotted-decimal address: the macro INET_ADDR is used to convert this into integer format in the appropriate byte-order.

All addresses are handled in the native byte order, so you do not need to use byte-order conversion functions, such as BSD’s htonl() or htons().