SERVICES(5)

NAME

     services -- service name data base

DESCRIPTION

     The services file contains information regarding the known services
     available in the Internet.  For each service a single line should be
     present with the following information:

	   official service name
	   port number
	   protocol name
	   aliases

     Items are separated by any number of blanks and/or tab characters.  The
     port number and protocol name are considered a single item; a ``/'' is
     used to separate the port and protocol (e.g. ``512/tcp'').  A ``#'' indi-
     cates the beginning of a comment; subsequent characters up to the end of
     the line are not interpreted by the routines which search the file.

     Service names may contain any printable character other than a field
     delimiter, newline, or comment character.

NIS INTERACTION

     Access to the NIS services.byname map can be enabled by adding a single
     ``+'' on a line by itself in the /etc/services file.  This causes the
     contents of the NIS services map to be inserted at the location where the
     ``+'' appears.

FILES

     /etc/services  The services file resides in /etc.

SEE ALSO

     getservent(3)

BUGS

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

HISTORY

     The services file format appeared in 4.2BSD.