nslookup manual page does not clearly state what can be used as command-line options
Summary
The nslookup manual page says that "options" can be specified on the command line, but doesn't make it clear that these options correspond to the keywords for the interactive set
command.
BIND version used
9.11.3. Also confirmed in current latest release (9.15.8).
Steps to reproduce
man nslookup
What is the current bug behavior?
nslookup manual page says, in the ARGUMENTS section:
Options can also be specified on the command line if they precede the arguments and are prefixed with a hyphen.
Firstly, since options are not arguments, that text (and the following text) should be in a separate section called OPTIONS, not in the ARGUMENTS section.
Secondly, it's not clear what options are available (apart from the --version
option mentioned later, and the options used in the example query). After some investigation, it seems that all of the keyword[=value]
entries under the set
entry in INTERACTIVE COMMANDS are available as command-line options, but that is not stated in the man page.
The example query (nslookup -query=hinfo -timeout=10
) also uses an undocumented abbreviation (query
) for the querytype
/type
keyword. This potentially increases confusion if the reader tries to search the man page for a "query" option.
What is the expected correct behavior?
It should be clear to the reader what command-line options are available.
Possible fixes
Ideally, split the second half of the ARGUMENTS section (everything from "Options can also be specified..." onwards) out into a new OPTIONS section. Then move all of the keyword entries from under the set
command entry to the OPTIONS section, and rewrite the description of the set
command to refer to the options listed in the OPTIONS section.