it seems.. no

> Perl does not "use the /etc/hosts file". It's using the same network stack as the rest of the machine. It is the network layer that is using /etc/hosts.

PS I confirm that it should work: test it this way

# HOSTS
# 127.0.0.1 foo.example.com

perl -MSocket -E"say inet_ntoa(inet_aton($ARGV[0]))" foo.example.com

127.0.0.1
[download]

L*

If I put an entry in windows hosts file (127.0.0.1 foo.example.com) then I can ping foo.example.com at command line, but nslookup foo.example.com fails.

nslookup explicitly does NOT use the hosts file, because it is designed to do Name Server LOOKUPs. Almost all other software relies on the name resolution functions that DO use the hosts file.

Alexander

Did you open an issue for that problem?

Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

I can vouch that gethostbyname will use the hosts file on Linux.

This one-liner resolves a hostname to an IPv4 address:

perl -w -MSocket -e 'my $pip=gethostbyname("www.google.com");my $ip=in
+et_ntoa($pip);print $ip,"\n";'
[download]

"Normal" resolution via DNS returns: 142.250.72.132

127.0.0.1  www.google.com
[download]

The above one-liner returns: 127.0.0.1

So on Linux, Perl will use the hosts file (Well, technically, it use the resolver library). However, I don't have a Windows machine with Perl handy to test with so I do not know if it will also work there. No good reason it shouldn't.

wouldn't that depend on what is defined in /etc/nsswitch.conf and/or /etc/host.conf? At least that's what man gethostbyname says.

Yes, that is true. I haven't changed nsswitch.conf from the default for so long I'd forgotten about it.

Mea Culpa

However, I don't have a Windows machine with Perl handy to test with so I do not know if it will also work there.

I couldn't get your example to work on Windows 7 with Strawberry Perl-5.32.0:

C:\etc>type hosts
127.0.0.1  www.google.com.au

C:\etc>perl -MSocket -wle "my $pip=gethostbyname('www.google.com.au');
+my $ip=inet_ntoa($pip);print $ip;"
142.250.66.195
[download]

Maybe the hosts file needs to be elsewhere and/or named something else. (I also made a copy of etc/hosts named etc/hosts.txt.)

Sorry ... I don't have much knowledge on this sort of stuff ... just reporting what I found.

Cheers,
Rob

For such things I used C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts in the past.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery}