From: Julia Evans <julia@jvns.ca>
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2026 15:43:26 +0000 (-0500)
Subject: Add examples to the dig man page
X-Git-Tag: v9.21.19~13^2
X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=8972ed94242e8de67d7b35c2fa0015dee85a4e5d;p=thirdparty%2Fbind9.git

Add examples to the dig man page

The goal here is to help new or infrequent users figure out the most
basic ways to use dig.

Notes on the choice of examples:

* I wrote examples that users can copy and paste exactly as is, without
  having to come up with an appropriate IP address or domain name to use.
  The one exception is the `dig -x` example which uses an IP from the
  example range.
* `dig +noall +answer` here is because learning about `+noall +answer`
  was lifechanging for me when I learned about it, I've heard from
  others that they find it helpful too, and it's pretty hard to infer
  from the man page as is that it might be useful
* I thought about adding `+trace` but left it out because 5 examples was
  already starting to feel like a lot.
---

diff --git a/bin/dig/dig.rst b/bin/dig/dig.rst
index 05c68799d37..09e767bd74e 100644
--- a/bin/dig/dig.rst
+++ b/bin/dig/dig.rst
@@ -839,6 +839,29 @@ Files
 
 ``${HOME}/.digrc``
 
+Examples
+~~~~~~~~
+
+Only display the IP address(es) for example.com::
+
+   dig +short example.com
+
+Query the nameserver f.gtld-servers.net for example.com::
+
+   dig @f.gtld-servers.net example.com
+
+Look up the TXT record for example.com::
+
+   dig txt example.com
+
+Look up the hostname for an IP with reverse DNS::
+
+   dig -x 192.0.2.1
+
+Display a much shorter output with just the name, record type, TTL, and value for each answer::
+
+   dig +noall +answer example.com
+
 See Also
 ~~~~~~~~