This may or may not meet your needs, but it looks useful:

IO::Interface - Perl extension for access to network card configuration information

If you are looking for an OS independent method of getting IP info then you might try what tadman suggested to me thanks tadman. The netstat -r is apparently OS independant. It needs to be processed to pick them out but that looks reasonably easy. To be honest I havn't had a chance to try it yet (I'm waiting for a *nix head to email me the output it produces)

For *nix, there is usually a pastle of files you could read to get the information, for instance on Solaris some include:

• /etc/hostname.ifno
• /etc/hosts
• /etc/netmasks
• /etc/system
• /etc/defaultdomain
• /etc/defaultrouter
• /etc/resolv.conf
• /etc/nodename

UPDATE: Here is the one from the AS list I mentioned. I cannot find the original post, so the author will remain anonymous. Please note that I take no credit for this.

Greetings fellow monk ,

I think that your idea to try to do something with a native way to Perl is good , because it's a way to learn new things , and to make your chunk of code portable . But i learn that , in a tutorial at YAPC , sometimes it may be also a good idea to make something simple work simply and usable in a minute ...

For instance i do a beuah bad :

@badcode=`ifconfig`;
if (grep(/ppp0/,@badcode)){print"Connexion PPP OK !!!}
[download]

But it took me 30 secs to write and it works ! But i'm sure some other more cultured monk will give you a more elegant manner . And i , too , will gladly learn from it ...

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#
# Test script voor interface informatie
# by Djeezus 30/04/2004
# -------------------------------------
use IO::Interface;
use IO::Socket::INET ;

# must create socket first, bound to all interfaces
$sock = IO::Socket::INET->new(Proto => 'udp');

# get list of active interfaces
@iflist = $sock->if_list;
print "List interfaces : @iflist\n";

# get list of active interfaces/addresses
 for $intf (@iflist) 
    {
    $addr = $sock->if_addr(${intf});
    # creating hash interface/address
        $addrlist{"$intf"} = "$addr";
}

# all active interface/ipaddress 
# using 'key' => 'value' from created hash
while (($key,$value) = each %addrlist ) {
  print "$key\t=>\t$value\n"
}
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