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.

• /etc/protocols The protocols file resides in /etc.

getprotoent(3)

The protocols file format appeared in

A name server should be used instead of a static file.