> (The algorithm used is to try a name server, and if the query times out, trythe next, until out of name servers, then repeat trying allthe name servers until a maximum number of retries are made).
So it seems there is a de facto standard for the default libraries in some *NIX OSes?
* https://www.isc.org/downloads/libbind/
* http://wiki.netbsd.org/individual-software-releases/netresol...
* https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=resolv/READ...
One can even trace its spread from, say, 386BSD through NetBSD to OpenBSD.
* https://github.com/NetBSD/src/blob/516da8a02fc8bc10555ed9acd...
* https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/df930be708d50e9715f173ca...
Manual pages are not standards, not specifications, but implementation documentation. As Chuck McManis said in this very discussion, to misuse them as standards or specifications is to mistakenly treat implementation as architecture.
The BIND DNS client library is far from the only DNS client library in existence. Other DNS client libraries read /etc/resolv.conf, as part of a BIND DNS client compatibility shim or otherwise. They do not have the same implementation details as the BIND DNS client; they do not all have the same access patterns as the BIND DNS client. Indeed, as I have mentioned elsewhere in this very discussion, even other tools from the same origin, namely nslookup, read /etc/resolv.conf and have different access patterns.
* https://cr.yp.to/djbdns/blurb/library.html
* http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ian/adns/
* http://25thandclement.com/~william/projects/dns.c.html
* https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.protocols.dns.bind/B3tg...
There is not a single common conventional, let alone standard, behaviour to rely upon.
None of your links contain the text "resolve.conf".
Nslookup is an end user diagnostic tool and would not be expected to conform to any standard, even if there was one.