About C structures for network programming

[becker]

Hi, how are you? I have been reading networking related
source code written in C lately, and I have encountered so many
structures that I have no clue of. Could anybody tell me how to get
somewhat detailed information about those structures? I have already
looked header files, but a lot of them are just too terse for me to
understand. I use linux, so could anybody tell me if it is possible to
use man page for this sort of purpose? I appreciate any advice.
Thank you in advance.

 

[Jonathan Bartlett]

Hi, how are you? I have been reading networking related
source code written in C lately, and I have encountered so many
structures that I have no clue of.

First of all, this is probably inappropriate for comp.lang.c -- probably
better to use comp.programming or a newsgroup related to your specific
system.

Is this kernel or user-level code?

If it's kernel code, using Linux, check the docs here:

http://jungla.dit.upm.es/~jmseyas/linux/kernel/hackers-docs.html

If it's userspace code, then (a) check the man pages for the functions
that use those structures, and (b) check out Beej's network programming
guide. I think that's where most of us learned how to do that sort of
thing:

http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~beej/guide/net/

Jon