Is it possible to use a wildcard character with the -w option?

[Bundy01]

Hi,

Is it possible to use a wildcard with the -w option?
I'm trying to find sub-domains starting with :

• my-od
• my-od-1
• my-od-2
• ...

I've tried dnsx -d DOMAIN -w my-od* but I get an error:

zsh: no matches found: my-od*

Thank you.

[dogancanbakir]

This is not possible with the current design.

[Bundy01]

thx,

can you take a look at the PR shrewdeye discussions on subfinder if you haven't already?

[dogancanbakir]

I'll review it as soon as possible. Thanks for the reminder!

[bad-antics]

The zsh: no matches found: my-od* error is from your shell trying to expand the glob * before dnsx ever sees it — it's not a dnsx issue.

Fix — quote the argument:

dnsx -d DOMAIN -w "my-od*"

But that still won't work because dnsx -w expects a file path, not a pattern. It reads subdomain prefixes from a wordlist file.

What you actually want:

1. Create a wordlist file with your prefixes:

# Generate the wordlist
echo "my-od" > /tmp/wordlist.txt
for i in $(seq 1 100); do echo "my-od-$i" >> /tmp/wordlist.txt; done

# Run dnsx with it
dnsx -d DOMAIN -w /tmp/wordlist.txt -a -resp -silent

2. Or use a sequence inline:

printf "my-od
"; seq 1 100 | sed 's/^/my-od-/' | dnsx -d DOMAIN -a -resp -silent

3. Or use subfinder + dnsx for broader discovery:

subfinder -d DOMAIN -silent | grep "my-od" | dnsx -a -resp -silent

The -w flag takes a file path to a wordlist, not a glob pattern. Generate your prefixes into a file first.