[wahern]

Plan 9's dial() interface is implemented in a user land library. In terms of the interfaces provided by the kernel, connecting a socket is anything but simple in Plan 9. See https://9p.io/sources/plan9/sys/src/libc/9sys/dial.c

The reason no standard interface has replaced getaddrinfo + socket + connect is probably because it's just barely simple enough for common usage in C, and C was never the language you turned to when you wanted to write something short and sweet--that's why Unix environments have always hosted a myriad of other languages. If initializing a network connection were as complex as in Plan 9, doubtless Unix would have provided a more succinct libc interface for the common case

The BSD Sockets API is also close to the simplest possible interface for supporting all the various address and socket option combinations that are possible. (The kernel provides mechanism, not policy.) So even if POSIX, Linux, or whatever included a better standard interface for initializing a connection, it would have to be in addition to the BSD Sockets API (or equivalent).

[p_l]

BSD Sockets are infamous for being significant issue in using anything other than IPv4 (getaddrinfo is copied over from XTI, aka Streams-related "evil" API).

They are literally a low-level API that happened to be part of IPv4-only stack because DoD had short deadline to get IPv4 ported to VAX and other new Unix machines.

And OS should provide a policy when it comes to networking, otherwise you end up with never ending story of working around other's software to implement them.