Doc/lib/libnis.tex

   1 \section{\module{nis} ---
   2          Interface to Sun's NIS (Yellow Pages)}
   3
   4 \declaremodule{extension}{nis}
   5   \platform{UNIX}
   6 \moduleauthor{Fred Gansevles}{Fred.Gansevles@cs.utwente.nl}
   7 \sectionauthor{Moshe Zadka}{mzadka@geocities.com}
   8 \modulesynopsis{Interface to Sun's N.I.S. (a.k.a. Yellow Pages) library.}
   9
  10 The \module{nis} module gives a thin wrapper around the NIS library, useful
  11 for central administration of several hosts.
  12
  13 Because NIS exists only on \UNIX{} systems, this module is
  14 only available for \UNIX{}.
  15
  16 The \module{nis} module defines the following functions:
  17
  18 \begin{funcdesc}{match}{key, mapname}
  19 Return the match for \var{key} in map \var{mapname}, or raise an
  20 error (\exception{nis.error}) if there is none.
  21 Both should be strings, \var{key} is 8-bit clean.
  22 Return value is an arbitary array of bytes (i.e., may contain \code{NULL}
  23 and other joys).
  24
  25 Note that \var{mapname} is first checked if it is an alias to another name.
  26 XXX Describe list of all aliases? Internal for the C code, so
  27     I'm not sure it's a good idea.
  28 \end{funcdesc}
  29
  30 \begin{funcdesc}{cat}{mapname}
  31 Return a dictionary mapping \var{key} to \var{value} such that
  32 \code{match(\var{key}, \var{mapname})==\var{value}}.
  33 Note that both keys and values of the dictionary are arbitary
  34 arrays of bytes.
  35
  36 Note that \var{mapname} is first checked if it is an alias to another name.
  37 \end{funcdesc}
  38
  39 \begin{funcdesc}{maps}{}
  40 Return a list of all valid maps.
  41 \end{funcdesc}
  42
  43
  44 The \module{nis} module defines the following exception:
  45
  46 \begin{excdesc}{error}
  47 An error raised when a NIS function returns an error code.
  48 \end{excdesc}