The host to query is taken from a global configuration file, a configuration file specified on the command line, or selected directly on the command line.

--version

display version, authors and licensing information.

--help

display a short help text.

-c FILE --config=FILE

uses FILE as a configuration file instead of the default.

-h HOST --host=HOST

overrides any hosts in the configuration file and queries HOST directly.

-p PORT --port=PORT

specifies a port number to use when querying a HOST.

-f --force-lookup

forces a query to be made to a host even if a current object is available from the cache.

-v --verbose

outputs verbose debugging information while running (use this before sending a bugreport to ensure that it's indeed a bug and not a misconfiguration). You can increase the verbosity by giving several verbose commands to jwhois, such as -vv.

-n --no-redirect

disable features that redirect queries from one server to another.

-s --no-whoisservers

disable the built-in support for whois-servers.net.

-a --raw

send query verbatim to receiving hosts instead of rewriting them according to the configuration.

-i --display-redirections

display every step in a redirection (default is to display only the last answer).

-d --disable-cache

completely disable both reading and writing to cache.

-r --rwhois

force the query to use the rwhois protocoll instead of HTTP or whois.

--rwhois-display=DISPLAY

asks receiving rwhois servers to display the results in the DISPLAY display instead of the default dump display.

--rwhois-limit=LIMIT

asks receiving rwhois servers to limit their responses to LIMIT matches.

jwhois -h whois.ripe.net -- -i admin-c,tech-c,zone-c CO19-RIPE

-- is used to separate the RIPE options from the jwhois options.