HOSTS
Generated by scripts/gen-format-pages.py from docs/data/format-metadata/, FILE_FORMATS.csv and docs/formats-master.csv. Do not edit by hand: change the source, then run the script.
Hosts File Preview.
At a glance
| Purpose | A hosts file (/etc/hosts or Windows hosts): IP addresses mapped to host names. |
| Extensions | .hosts |
| Poka parser | poka-hosts |
| Viewer | poka-table-viewer |
| Depth tier | Parser with a shared viewer (see Depth tiers) |
| Breadth tier | B2 Broad (see Breadth tiers) |
How much Poka reads
B2 Broad. The common content of the current and the common older versions is decoded. Some named features or versions are not, and are listed.
Confidence: medium (the reviewer read the code). Basis: Reviewed 2026-10-26: read parsers/poka-hosts/src/main.rs (146 lines) and plugin.json. No unit tests or tests/samples.rs; the corpus has no .hosts and .hostsfile sample. Covers .hosts and .hostsfile. The table has one row per IP and host-name pair with the address family and the line's comment. Judgement: B2: every entry is shown; the gaps are limits, redaction by design and fields left raw.
What Poka does not read
- Comment-only lines are not shown
- Only the first 5,000 pairs are listed; files over 1 MiB are cut without a flag
Libraries
Libraries Poka uses or has assessed for this format, with the status, licence and language the registry records.
- hostfile (candidate; MIT; Rust; https://github.com/aneeshdurg/hostfile) — Crate for parsing /etc/hosts; version 1.1.1 released April 2025.
- hostsmod (candidate; BSD-3-Clause; Rust; https://docs.rs/hostsmod) — Parser library plus CLI; keeps original text parts so a hosts file can be edited and reconstructed.
Sources
- parsers/poka-hosts/src/main.rs
- parsers/poka-hosts/plugin.json