>By any chance, once the base version of bind is being phased out, do you >know if there will still be a dig(1) in the base?
dig and nslookup will remain in base. Go look in our tree at the contortions required to keep them there, since ISC has created a mess of their own libraries and makes the 800 lines of nslookup and 7000 lines of dig use them. Hold your nose when you look, ok?