[dns-operations] a note on fetching the root zone using "dig"

[Patrick Mevzek]

On 2018-11-01 14:58 -0500, Anand Buddhdev wrote:> However, "idnout" is 
different. It works, or not, depending on how dig
> was compiled. This means that dig's behaviour is going to be different
> depending on various things (compile-time settings, a user's locale,
> etc).

And the version.

My "DiG 9.9.5-9+deb8u14-Debian"
only says:
        If dig has been built with IDN (internationalized domain name) 
support, it can accept and display non-ASCII domain names.  dig 
appropriately converts character encoding of domain name before sending 
a request to DNS server or displaying a reply from the server. If you'd 
like to turn off the IDN support for some reason, defines the 
IDN_DISABLE environment variable. The
        IDN support is disabled if the variable is set when dig runs.

(no idnout option there whatsoever)

where my "DiG 9.12.0" says
        +[no]idnout
            Convert [do not convert] puny code on output. This requires 
IDN SUPPORT to have been enabled at compile time. The default is to 
convert output.

> For such an option, I think that dig needs to default to a
> behhaviour of least surprise. And this is why it should not be on by
> default.

I agree with you but I am sure least surprise could still be argued.
However I would say, that outputs from one version to another should not 
change by default, so when "idnout" flag was introduced, since previous 
version by default did not IDN decode, then newer versions should not 
either, which means as if +noidnout is passed by default.
-- 
Patrick Mevzek