Re:The trouble with struct sockaddr's fake flexible array
by jeroenhd on Friday November 29, 2024 @03:12PM
(#42276725)
The socket API was designed to be a low-level API. If you're writing applications, you probably want to use libcurl/WinInet or some other abstraction over all of the low-level stuff. Using raw connect() calls is like writing your own XML parser when myriad of existing solutions are free and ready to use.
Your example would fit perfectly in a libinet library, but I doubt the C standard library is going to include improvements upon this. If you want good internet support, pick a library or, better yet, another language because plain C is terrible for managing arbitrary network inputs anyway.
There is also some stuff your code doesn't handle (do you retry when a connection fails but an SRV record lists multiple options? who is supposed to free the inet_err struct, because your example leaks memory? how do you handle attempts to connect over IPv6 on hosts still stuck on IPv4 only?) that I would expect a low-level C interface to be more explicit about.
Your example would fit perfectly in a libinet library, but I doubt the C standard library is going to include improvements upon this. If you want good internet support, pick a library or, better yet, another language because plain C is terrible for managing arbitrary network inputs anyway.
There is also some stuff your code doesn't handle (do you retry when a connection fails but an SRV record lists multiple options? who is supposed to free the inet_err struct, because your example leaks memory? how do you handle attempts to connect over IPv6 on hosts still stuck on IPv4 only?) that I would expect a low-level C interface to be more explicit about.