name service switch

This article was first written in August 2004 for the BeezNest technical
website (http://glasnost.beeznest.org/articles/151).

Every UNIX/Linux operating system uses a set of libraries called the Name Service Switch (which is part of the LibC of the system) to resolve its names, be it for userids to login names or IP addresses to hostnames resolution, or whatever and the opposite. This library is meant to make the use of NIS, LDAP, etc… transparent to the program that will use it in the end.