Each network interface has a name. This usually consists of a few
letters that relate to the type of interface, which may be followed by a
number if there is more than one interface of that type. Examples
might be lo (the loopback interface) and eth0 (the first
Ethernet interface).
Although such names are convenient for humans, it would be clumsy to
have to use them whenever a program needs to refer to an interface. In
such situations an interface is referred to by its index, which is
an arbitrarily-assigned small positive integer.
The following functions, constants and data types are declared in the
header file net/if.h.
— Constant: size_t IFNAMSIZ
This constant defines the maximum buffer size needed to hold an
interface name, including its terminating zero byte.
— Function: unsigned int if_nametoindex (const char *ifname)
This function yields the interface index corresponding to a particular
name. If no interface exists with the name given, it returns 0.
— Function: char * if_indextoname (unsigned int ifindex, char *ifname)
This function maps an interface index to its corresponding name. The
returned name is placed in the buffer pointed to by ifname, which
must be at least IFNAMSIZ bytes in length. If the index was
invalid, the function's return value is a null pointer, otherwise it is
ifname.
— Data Type: struct if_nameindex
This data type is used to hold the information about a single
interface. It has the following members:
This function returns an array of if_nameindex structures, one
for every interface that is present. The end of the list is indicated
by a structure with an interface of 0 and a null name pointer. If an
error occurs, this function returns a null pointer.
The returned structure must be freed with if_freenameindex after
use.
