$HOSTALIASES does not allow IP addresses

[Shahar Or]

$HOSTALIASES, as described [here](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/gethostbyname.3.html),

Does not allow use of hostname to IP address resolutions. Only hostname to hostname resolutions.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.10
Package: libc6 2.21-0ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.1.0-3.3-generic 4.1.3
Uname: Linux 4.1.0-3-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.18-0ubuntu5
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Mon Aug 10 12:34:41 2015
Dependencies:
 gcc-5-base 5.1.1-14ubuntu1
 libc6 2.21-0ubuntu4
 libgcc1 1:5.1.1-14ubuntu1
 multiarch-support 2.21-0ubuntu4
InstallationDate: Installed on 2010-10-12 (1762 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release amd64 (20101007)
SourcePackage: glibc
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to wily on 2014-11-11 (271 days ago)

[Shahar Or (mightyiam)]

It would be nice to be able to use $HOSTALIASES like:

foo 10.10.10.10

And not only:

foo bar

[Andrei Dobrea (andrei-dobrea)]

HOSTALIASES does not seem to work at all.
Ubuntu 14.04 3.13.0-105-generic x86_64.

[Andrei Dobrea (andrei-dobrea)]

Correction: it does work, but not for all the commands (ping, autofs does not resolve the aliases, curl and firefox do).

[Shahar Or (mightyiam)]

@andrei-dobrea, someone who actually knows what he's talking about should answer this. But IIRC some of those have their own resolution libraries. That's why.