Can you pass stdin into unix host/dig command?

Question

Let's say I have a list of ip's coming into a log that i'm tailing

1.1.1.1
1.1.1.2
1.1.1.3

etc..

and i'd like to easily resolve them to host names. I'd like to be able to

tail -f access.log | host -

Which fails as host doesn't understand input from stdin in this way. What's the easiest way to do with without having to write a static file or fall back to perl/python/etc.. ?

Answer 1

Use xargs:

tail -f access.log | xargs host

Answer 2

You could also use the read builtin:

tail -f access.log | while read line; do host $line; done