Except upvoted comments continue to propagate confusion over what's actually happening by omitting the root zone from example hostname queries. While this is a

Except upvoted comments continue to propagate confusion over what's actually happening by omitting the root zone from example hostname queries. While this is a fully qualified domain name: www.example.com This is the actual domain name: www.example.com. The linked article and doesn't really explain why someone should add the trailing dot to the hostname. I do: It's the name of the root DNS zone and unambiguously identifies the `dig` parameter as a hostname.