DNS
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Monday man page: dig, host & nslookup
For this week's Monday man page, it's a triple threat: dig, host, and nslookup. All three utilities are included with the BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) version 9 package, part of every Mac OS X 10.4 installation, and all three do pretty much the same task: translate hostnames to IP addresses and vice versa. In 10.3.9 and earlier, the Network Utility 'lookup' tab was a front-end for nslookup, with an option via checkbox to use dig instead; starting in 10.4 the checkbox is gone and the utility is dig-only. If you want a good introduction to how DNS works, the MacDevCenter has an excellent primer, and I can also heartily recommend DNS and BIND, possibly the most comprehensible book about a complicated subject that I've ever read. After the jump, we'll talk a bit more about how DNS lookup tools are useful, and why you might prefer one of this troika to the others.
