whois
formats and sends queries to any RFC954 whois server and prints the results
to standard output.
OPTIONS
-h server
The name of the server to query. If no server is specified, the environment
variables NICNAMESERVER and WHOISSERVER are checked for server
names, and if neither is set, whois.crsnic.net is queried.
-p port
Change the port the whois client connects to. The default is
whois but any valid service name will do. If you get bored you can
try using finger and see what happens.
-t
Set a time limit for each query, after which the client will exit rather
than wait. The time limit includes every part of the query, including name
resolution.
-r
Force recursion. If the first server response contains a line similar to
Whois Server: hostname
whois will retry the same query with hostname as the server. This
is the default when the default server is being queried.
-n
Disable recursion, even if the default server is being queried.
-v
Be verbose in the query. This causes the client to print the query string
it will send to the server before sending it.
--
Don't interpret subsequent -p, -h, -r, or -v flags
given as arguments.
BUGS
None known, but it's a simple enough protocol that I don't think there are
going to be any problems.
