dig v/s host v/s nslookup

Dig and nslookup are two tools that can be used to query DNS servers. 

They both perform similar functions, but there are some key differences. For example, nslookup can only be used to query one DNS server at a time, while dig can query multiple DNS servers simultaneously. Additionally, dig provides more detailed information about the DNS records that are returned, while nslookup only displays the A and AAAA records.

Nslookup is a network administration command-line tool for querying the Domain Name System (DNS) to obtain domain name or IP address mapping, or other DNS records. Nslookup has two modes: interactive and non-interactive.

dig uses the OS resolver libraries. nslookup uses is own internal ones. 

What is dig and nslookup?

dig

(on Mac OS X and Linux) and nslookup (on Microsoft Windows) are the primary command-line tools for troubleshooting DNS issues. While web-based tools are convenient and easy to use, it is often faster to use a command-line tool on your own system.

nslookup is deprecated.

nslookup

is an abbreviation of name server lookup and allows you to query your DNS service. The tool is typically used to obtain a domain name via your command line interface (CLI), receive IP address mapping details, and lookup DNS records. This information is retrieved from the DNS cache of your chosen DNS server.

host

 command is an easy to use command-line utility for performing DNS lookups under Linux, macOS, BSD and Unix-like systems. We can use it to find or convert DNS names to IP addresses and vice versa.

It also performs DNS lookups related to the DNS query. The host command's default behavior displays a summary of its command-line arguments and supported options.

List of DNS record types

Before you use the host command you should aware of common types of resource records of the DNS. Here are most common resource records:

By default, host command looks for A, AAAA, and MX records only.