What it does
Paste the output of an nslookup command and the tool decodes it into a structured, explained breakdown: which resolver answered, whether the answer was authoritative, each record with its fields spelled out, and any failure it reported. It parses the text only; nothing is resolved and nothing is sent anywhere.
Reading nslookup's layout
nslookup prints DNS answers in a loose, prose-like layout that is quite different from dig, and that layout carries meaning worth making explicit. Every answer starts with a Server and Address header naming the resolver that was queried. A line reading Non-authoritative answer: tells you the response came from a cache rather than from a server responsible for the zone; its absence, for a direct query, implies an authoritative answer. When a lookup fails, nslookup prints a line like ** server can't find NAME: NXDOMAIN, and the tool surfaces that failure and what the status means.
Records and their fields
For most record types nslookup prints a simple name = value line, but a few pack several fields into one line or block, and those are the ones worth decoding:
- MX records read as
mail exchanger = 10 mail.example.com, where the number is the preference (lower is preferred) and the name is the mail host. The tool separates the two. - SRV records (RFC 2782) carry priority, weight, port, and target in one line; the tool breaks them apart so you can see which service host and port they point to.
- SOA records span several lines: the zone's primary name server, the responsible party's mailbox, and the serial and the timers (refresh, retry, expire, minimum). The tool lays those fields out.
Using it
Paste an nslookup response and read the resolver, the authoritative status, each record with its fields, and any error. The parse is deterministic and entirely local; the tool never performs a lookup of its own, which also makes it a safe way to read output captured from somewhere else.