thanks for the answers.
i wanted in c to get the total bytes sent/rcvd on the nics without spawning ifconfig|grep|parse.
fwiw, in
http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/3.x/release/src/busybox-1.18.3.tar.bz2 it has /networking/ifconfig.c
which has the comment block below. i looked at code and there is no output. so i was confused where tinycore got ifconfig from. more fwiw, as you know one does not have to install inetutils to get ifconfig.
thanks again. the time and help are appreciated.
/* vi: set sw=4 ts=4: */
/* ifconfig
*
* Similar to the standard Unix ifconfig, but with only the necessary
* parts for AF_INET, and without any printing of if info (for now).
*
* Bjorn Wesen, Axis Communications AB
*
*
* Authors of the original ifconfig was:
* Fred N. van Kempen, <waltje@uwalt.nl.mugnet.org>
*
* Licensed under GPLv2 or later, see file LICENSE in this source tree.
*/