sockaddrun

sockaddrun is a term used in some programming and networking communities to describe a hypothetical cross-protocol socket address abstraction. It is not a standard, but a conceptual model designed to unify the representation of endpoints across IPv4, IPv6, Unix domain sockets, and other address families. The idea is to provide a single, runtime-agnostic container that can carry address data and related metadata in a portable form.

Design goals include protocol independence, compact storage, and straightforward conversion to and from native OS socket structures such as sockaddr, sockaddr_in, and sockaddr_in6. A typical sockaddrun would include a family identifier, a length, a data buffer for the address, an optional port, and a scope identifier for IPv6. The abstraction supports both in-memory use and serialization for network transport or inter-process communication.

Usage scenarios include multi-protocol network libraries, cross-platform applications, and network diagnostics tools that need to manipulate many address types without branching on each family. Implementations often provide helpers to parse textual addresses into sockaddrun and to emit platform-specific sockaddr representations when calling system APIs.

Relationship to existing constructs: sockaddrun is inspired by the socket address family abstractions such as sockaddr_storage, but aims to be higher level and more flexible. It is not part of any official networking standard, and adoption varies by project. Potential drawbacks include added complexity and possible performance overhead.

See also: sockaddr, sockaddr_in, sockaddr_in6, sockaddr_storage. The term appears primarily in informal discussions and research contexts rather than widespread production use.