Hello, and welcome to DNS
"When in doubt: authoritative servers 'host' DNS data, 'resolvers' look up things over at authoritative servers and clients run 'stub resolvers' to look things up over at resolvers."<p>What about programs run by clients that look things up over at authoritative servers?  (Programs that do <i>not</i> look things up over at resolvers.)<p>"Zone files are one way of storing DNS data, but these are not integral to the operation of a nameserver.  The zone file format is standardized, but it is highly non-trivial to parse.<p>...<p>Of specific note, many people have attempted to write a grammar (parser) for zonefiles and it is almost impossible."<p>I am guessing this statement is only referring to "BIND" zone file format.<p>I wonder how that could be a desirable or even acceptable state of affairs: having a "standardized" format that is "almost impossible" to parse.<p>The author suggests zone files are "not integral" to operation of a nameserver.<p>If zonefiles are optional does that also leave the programmer the option to use a zonefile format of their own choosing?<p>IME, parsing a tinydns zonefile is not difficult at all, because the author did not use the "standardized" BIND zonefile format.