Subprocess puzzle and two questions

[Roy Smith]

In article <mailman.3700.1352930072.27098.python-list at python.org>,
 Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm slightly surprised that there's no way with the Python stdlib to 
> point a DNS query at a specific server

Me too, including the "only slightly" part.  The normal high-level C 
resolver routines (getaddrinfo/getnameinfo, or even the old 
gethostbyname series), don't expose any way to do that.  You have to dig 
quite far down in the resolver library stack to get to the point where 
you can do that.  The concept of not knowing or caring which specific 
server has the data you need is quite deeply baked into the basic DNS 
architecture.