RpcRegistry - name space for finding RPC services

SYNOPSIS

       #include <Dispatch/rpcregistry.h>

DESCRIPTION

       RpcRegistry provides a name space for finding RPC services
       based on the use of  NFS  filesystems  among  a  group  of
       hosts.  When an RPC service wishes to record its host name
       and port number, it will give the path of a file in  which
       to store the information.  When a client wants to find the
       RPC service's host name and port number, it will give  the
       path  of  a file from which to read the information.  Usu-
       ally the path will be the name of a file  in  the  current
       working directory since different hosts may have different
       absolute pathnames for the same file in a NFS  filesystem.
       The  RPC  service's  name  space  is the name space of the
       host's filesystem and the  file's  contents  provides  the
       information  needed  to  open a connection to the RPC ser-
       vice.

PUBLIC OPERATIONS

       Each function is a static member function, which  means  a
       program  can  call  it  without  having  to instantiate an
       RpcRegistry object.  Each function returns true if it suc-
       ceeded or false if some error occurred.

       boolean record(const char* path, int port)
              Record  the RPC service's host name and port number
              in the given file.  If the file already exists, its
              previous contents will be lost.

       boolean erase(const char* path)
              Remove the file which stores the RPC service's host
              name and port number so that no more  clients  will
              be able to contact the RPC service.

       boolean find(const char* path, char*& hostname, int& port)
              Open the file which stores the RPC  service's  host
              name  and port number.  If the file does not exist,
              return failure silently.  If the file  does  exist,
              read  the  RPC service's host name and port address
              from it.  If ``hostname'' is  nil  upon  entry,  it
              will contain the address of a dynamically allocated
              string upon  exit  (which  must  be  freed  by  the
              caller).

SEE ALSO

       RpcService(3I)