Using dig for checking domain registration

[Stephane Bortzmeyer]

On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 01:14:43PM -0700,
 Scott Haneda <talklists at newgeo.com> wrote 
 a message of 38 lines which said:

> I have been using the below command to determine if a domain is  
> registered.  

Bad idea. A domain can be registered and not published in the DNS (for
instance, in .COM, because it is on hold, in .FR because it failed the
technical tests, etc).

whois is the only tool you can use to check if it is registered.