[mythtv-users] Re: Why only numeric IP addresses work?

[Joseph A. Caputo]

On Wednesday 13 October 2004 10:40, Grant Edwards wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 13, 2004 at 08:51:42AM -0500, Grant Edwards wrote:
> > and setting up an inet_addr stuct, all that's required is to
> > rip out a couple dozen lines of code and replace it with a
> > single call to gethostbyname().  That illustrates _my_ point:
> > why would anybody go to all the extra work required to
> > explicitly _not_allow_ hostnames?
>
> I browsed around the source code a bit, and in some places
> gethostbyname() is used (so the normal resover libraries will
> work).  In other places, some Qt "host address" object is used.
>
> >From what I can tell from the Qt documentation, that object can
>
> only understand dotted-quad notation.  Apparently, the Qt guys
> decided to write their own address parser rather than doing the
> right thing and just calling gethostbyname().  Not only did
> they reinvent the wheel, they apparently made it sqaure...

Best guess is that they were trying to avoid having to deal with 
variants of (or nonexistence of) gethostbyname() on different 
platforms.  You have to make some compromises when you're developing a 
cross-platform toolkit.

-JAC