Should I think about linked list returned by getaddrinfo when I get addrinfo for my "home" server

Question

I created a server using sockets that runs on my home network. socket address=192.168.88.123:7777 When I call getaddrinfo() function I put "192.168.88.123" as first parameter and "7777" as second and also some hints (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM) and pointer to the result linked list. I noticed that in this case I always get linked list with only one structure.

Question: should I think about linked list in such case (when I am working over my own server) or getaddrinfo will always return linked list with one element?

Answer 1

The whole point of getaddrinfo() is to get a list of IPs.

If you request a specific IP address as input, the resulting list will contain only 1 element for that same IP.

If you request a hostname as input, the resulting list will contain an element for every IP that the hostname resolves to.

If you don't request an IP/hostname at all, the resulting list will depend on whether the AI_PASSIVE flag is used. If the flag is used, the list will contain elements for 0.0.0.0 and/or ::0, depending on the ai_family requested. If the flag is not used, then the list will contain elements for 127.0.0.1 and/or ::1, depending on the ai_family requested.