gethostbyname and multiple addresses for one host

[Andreas Jaeger <aj@arthur.rhein-neckar.de>]

Matthias described a problem with his setup and gethostbyname.  His
/etc/hosts contains:
10.0.0.254              emil.nef.wh.uni-dortmund.de     emil
127.0.0.1               localhost
129.217.240.1           emil.nef.wh.uni-dortmund.de     emil
129.217.255.132         emil.nef.wh.uni-dortmund.de     emil
129.217.255.249         emil.nef.wh.uni-dortmund.de     emil

and gethostbyname ("emil") only returns the first IP address but
should return all IP addresses.  I checked all documentation I could
find for the format of /etc/hosts and only Solaris 7 mentioned this
case:


     The hosts file has one entry for each  IP  address  of  each
     host.  If  a host has more than one IP address, it will have
     one entry for each, on consecutive lines. The format of each
     line is:

     IP-addressofficial-host-namenicknames...

     Items are separated by any number of SPACE and/or TAB  char-
     acters.  The  first item on a line is the host's IP address.
     The second entry is the  host's  official  name.  Subsequent
     entries  on the same line are alternative names for the same
     machine, or "nicknames."  Nicknames are optional.

     For a host  with  more  than  one  IP  address,  consecutive
     entries  for these addresses may contain the same or differ-
     ing nicknames. Different nicknames are useful for  assigning
     distinct names to different addresses.

     A call to gethostbyname(3N) returns a hostent structure con-
     taining  the  union of all addresses and nicknames from each
     line containing a matching official name or nickname.

Matthias' /etc/hosts doesn't contain email on consecutive lines -
there the localhost between.  Nevertheless (just checked) this doesn't 
work.

Is this a bug in glibc?

Andreas
-- 
 Andreas Jaeger   aj@arthur.rhein-neckar.de    jaeger@informatik.uni-kl.de
  for pgp-key finger ajaeger@aixd1.rhrk.uni-kl.de