# dig

7 Hacker News commenters recommended dig and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Command-line DNS lookup tool that people recommend for querying and tracing DNS records; some note nslookup may be the only one installed by default.

## Why people recommend it

- Useful DNS lookup tool (2 comments): "I recommend dig but you might only have nslookup available out of the box" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50202292)) "`dig` is certainly useful" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46070114))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [fzf](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fzf.md): 78 recommend
- [jq](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jq.md): 75 recommend
- [grep](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grep.md): 65 recommend
- [Atuin](https://hackerapproved.com/p/atuin.md): 63 recommend
- [GitHub CLI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github-cli.md): 49 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "dig", https://hackerapproved.com/p/dig/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).