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."What about programs run by clients that look things up over at authoritative servers?  (Programs that do not look things up over at resolvers.)"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....Of specific note, many people have attempted to write a grammar (parser) for zonefiles and it is almost impossible."I am guessing this statement is only referring to "BIND" zone file format.I wonder how that could be a desirable or even acceptable state of affairs: having a "standardized" format that is "almost impossible" to parse.The author suggests zone files are "not integral" to operation of a nameserver.If zonefiles are optional does that also leave the programmer the option to use a zonefile format of their own choosing?IME, parsing a tinydns zonefile is not difficult at all, because the author did not use the "standardized" BIND zonefile format.