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

If I add this line to /etc/hosts: 
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.

In reply to Re: Strawberry Perl: Windows hosts file not working? by enemyofthestate
in thread Strawberry Perl: Windows hosts file not working? by sectokia

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