
          DNS resolver parsing routines
                 version 1.3

                 Dave Shield
           <D.T.Shield@csc.liv.ac.uk>



  The standard BIND nameserver implementation provides
routines for the common case of name to address mapping,
and for making general queries.  However, there doesn't
appear to be anything generally available to assist with
interpreting the results of such queries.

  This package is aimed at filling that gap.  It will
take the opaque character string returned by the resolver
routines, and expand it into a standard C structure.
This can then be traversed by the programmer as required.
It also contains routines for copying, printing and freeing
such structures.

  There's also a very simple program to test the library.
Compile it using "make testres".


  Acknowledgments should go to:
	The BIND people
		(much of the code was "sort of lifted"
		  from their debug routines)
	Cricket Liu
		(for pointing me at that, and the O'Reilly book)
	Rick McCarty
		(for suggestions as to the data structures)

plus everyone who has reported bugs.


Feel free to use these routines if you think they might be
of some use.  It would be helpful if you could feed back any
problems you find.
  The primary development environment is HP series 700 systems,
running HP-UX 9, though it has also been reported to work on
machines running HP-UX 10, SunOS, Solaris and FreeBSD.
Remember to check the Makefile for system-specific settings.
If you need to make changes to use it on other systems,
please let me know.

  This package has been tested with all RR types supported by
the 4.9.5 release of BIND.  It is hoped to add support for the
new RR types included with v8 BIND, but I wanted to get this
current version of the library out to address the problems that
have been reported.

Dave
July 1997
