In message <30545475.6952.1361592063875.JavaMail.root@benjamin.baylink.com>, Ja y Ashworth writes:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Cutler James R" <james.cutler@consultant.com>
A domain name without a terminal dot is a relative domain name. -- An application requesting name to address translation gets to decide if a search list is to be used, including the default of dot.
A domain name with a terminal dot is a Fully Qualified Domain Name. -- An application requesting name to address translation must submit the name as received to the lookup process.
These definitions have been effective of decades and do not need additional terminology. -- Faulty implementations are not an excuse for ever more complex terminology.
The authoritative document here is, as Joe Abley noted earlier, RFC 1035, which says, in section 5.1:
""" Domain names that end in a dot are called absolute, and are taken as complete. Domain names which do not end in a dot are called relative; the actual domain name is the concatenation of the relative part with an origin specified in a $ORIGIN, $INCLUDE, or as an argument to the master file loading routine. A relative name is an error when no origin is available. """
Which applies to domain names in master files.
Or, in more Jewish terms: not so much.
And in fact, I don't believe that you *have* a manual API-level choice as an application as to whether your resolver library will apply a search list or not: if you specify an absolute name, it won't; if you specify a relative name, it will.
Nope: gethostbyname(3) only takes one argument: char *hostname
So the only control you have as app is whether you include the trailing dot.
On most platforms it isn't the only control. Not gethostname predates search lists and even heirachical domain named.
(PS: your quoting (or bulleting) protocol is non-standard and non-intuitive)
Cheers, -- jra
-- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.co m Designer The Things I Think RFC 210 0 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DI I St Petersburg FL USA #natog +1 727 647 127 4
-- Mark Andrews, ISC 1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: marka@isc.org