Trouble with DNS query using whois

Question

What does the look them up with "=xxx" to receive a full display for each record mean? The man page does not discuss an equal sign, and I got an error when I tried to use the = literal.

$ whois a.com

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

A.COM.AU
A.COM.BR
A.COM.CN
A.COMMANDOLINE.COM
A.COMMUNIKITE.NET
A.COMOLO.DE
A.COMOLO.NET
A.COMPLYFLOW.COM
A.COMPONENTSLAB.COM
A.COMPTEPERSO.FR
A.COM

To single out one record, look it up with "xxx", where xxx is one of the
records displayed above. If the records are the same, look them up
with "=xxx" to receive a full display for each record.
...

$ whois =a.com
...
Whois Error: No Match for "=A.COM"

$ whois a.com=a.com
...
No match for "A.COM=A.COM".

Answer 1

You may not have pasted in all the output (or are running an older version of whois client). You should see that A.COM, the one you want, is on the IANA whois server. Do this then:

$ whois -h whois.iana.org  a.com
% IANA WHOIS server
% for more information on IANA, visit http://www.iana.org
% This query returned 1 object

domain:       A.COM

organisation: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

created:      1992-01-01
source:       IANA

If you were looking to register A.COM, you can't. All the single-character domains under COM were reserved a long time ago.