Table of Contents

# $EPIC: convert.txt,v 1.2 2006/07/24 07:11:25 sthalik Exp $

Synopsis:

$convert(<ip address|hostname>)

Technical:

This function does a DNS lookup on the given address. For an IP address, it attempts to find the corresponding Internet hostname. For a hostname, it attempts to find the corresponding IP address.

Practical:

This function does effectively the same thing as $iptoname() and $nametoip(). It is mostly useful when you want to convert an address, but you aren't sure if the input will be an IP address or not.

Returns:

IP address or hostname corresponding to input, or nothing on error

Examples:

$convert(some.school.edu)       returns IP address for "some.school.edu"
$convert(192.168.1.1)           returns hostname for "192.168.1.1"

An easy example of this in a script is:

alias dns {
  echo Matched $0 to $convert($0)
}