inet6(3N)inet6(3N)NAMEinet_pton(), inet_ntop() - Internet address manipulation routines for
IP Version 4 and later
SYNOPSISDESCRIPTION
The functions and are new with IP Version 6 (IPv6) and work with both
IP Version 4 (IPv4) and IPv6 addresses. The letters "p" and "n" stand
for and The presentation format for an address is often an ASCII string
and the numeric format is the binary value that goes into a socket
address structure.
The ASCII string is either the IPv4 address in dot notation or an IPv6
address in colon notation. An example of an ASCII string is or
The binary value is the hex representation of the IPv4/IPv6 address.
This binary value resides in the structure for IPv4 address and in the
structure for IPv6 address. (Refer to the inet(3N) manpage for more
details.)
The functions and are opposite of each other. The function converts an
ASCII address string to binary address, and the function converts a
binary address into ASCII address string. Also, these are equivalent to
and respectively.
The inet_pton() Function
The function converts an address in its standard text presentation form
into its numeric binary form.
The af argument specifies the family of the address. Currently, the and
address families are supported.
The src argument points to the IPv6/IPv4 address string being passed
in.
The argument points to a buffer in which the function stores the
numeric address. The address is returned in network byte order.
returns if the conversion succeeds, if the input is not a valid IPv4
dotted-decimal string or a valid IPv6 address string, or with errno set
to if the af argument is unknown.
The calling application must ensure that the buffer referred to by dst
is large enough to hold the numeric address (e.g., 4 bytes for or 16
bytes for
If the af argument is the function accepts a string in the standard
IPv4 dotted-decimal form:
ddd.ddd.ddd.ddd
where ddd is a one to three digit decimal number between 0 and 255.
Note that many implementations of the existing and functions accept
nonstandard input: octal numbers, hexadecimal numbers, and fewer than
four numbers. does not accept these formats.
If the af argument is then the function accepts a string in one of the
standard IPv6 text forms. (Refer to the IPv6 address notation below for
more details).
The inet_ntop() Function
The function converts a numeric address into a text string suitable for
presentation.
The af argument specifies the family of the address. This can be or
The src argument points to a buffer holding an IPv4 address if the af
argument is or an IPv6 address if the af argument is
The dst argument points to a buffer where the function will store the
resulting text string.
The size argument specifies the size of this buffer. The application
must specify a non-NULL dst argument. For IPv6 addresses, the buffer
must be at least 46-octets. For IPv4 addresses, the buffer must be at
least 16-octets. In order to allow applications to easily declare buf‐
fers of the proper size to store IPv4 and IPv6 addresses in string
form, the following two constants are defined in
The function returns a pointer to the buffer containing the text string
if the conversion succeeds, and NULL otherwise. Upon failure, errno is
set to if the af argument is invalid, or if the size of the result buf‐
fer is inadequate.
IPv6 Address Notation
The IPv6 address is bytes long. Example of an IPv6 address is as shown
below:
The 128 bits are written as eight 16-bit integers separated by colons.
Each integer is represented by four hexadecimal digits.
In the initial stages all the 128 bits will not be used, hence, it is
very likely that there will be many zeros. Hence the IP address in such
a scenario will look like this:
The above address can be represented in a compact fashion, by replacing
a set of consecutive null 16-bit numbers by two colons. The above
address can now be re-written as follows:
Expanding the abbreviation is very simple. Align whatever is at the
left of the double colon to the left of the address: these are the
leading 16-bit words. Then align whatever is at the right of the colons
to the right of the address and fill up with zeros.
The double-colon convention can be used only once inside an address.
To support the transition from IPv4, two special IPv6 addresses are
supported. They are addresses and addresses.
IPv4-Compatible Addresses Description and Example
IPv4-compatible addresses can be converted to and from the older IPv4
network address format. They are used when IPv6 systems need to commu‐
nicate with each other, but are separated by an IPv4 network.
IPv4-compatible addresses are formed by prepending 96 bits of zero, to
a valid, 32-bit IPv4 address. For example, the IPv4 address of
can be converted to the IPv6 address by first converting each decimal
number separated by dots (".") to a 2-digit hexadecimal value, and con‐
catenate into 4-digit hex values between colons (":") as listed below.
In addition, leading zeros may be omitted for each hex number between
the colons. Therefore, this may be written as the following IPv6
address:
We can retain the dot-decimal format and re-write the above address as
The above address is also a valid IPv4-compatible IPv6 address.
IPv4-Mapped Addresses Description and Example
IPv4-mapped addresses indicate systems that do not support IPv6. They
are limited to IPv4. An IPv6 host can communicate with an IPv4-only
host using the IPv4-mapped IPv6 address.
IPv4-mapped addresses are formed by prepending 80 bits of zero, and 16
bits of one's, to a valid 32 bit IPv4 address. An IPv4 address of
when mapped to IPv6, it becomes:
or
AUTHOR
These routines were developed by the University of California, Berke‐
ley.
SEE ALSOgethostent(3N), getnetent(3N), inet(3N), hosts(4), networks(4).
inet6(3N)