How to get IP address of named host?

If I execute commands like "ftp" or "ping" using a hostname rather than
a raw IP address, then that hostname is searched for in the /etc/hosts
file and the DNS.

How do I do that sort of IP lookup for a hostname in a shell script?

"host" is no good because it won't look in /etc/hosts.

Currently, I'm using a script that looks up the hostname by pinging the
host, times out in 1 second, and then parses the output report to
extract the IP address. This is somewhat clumsy so I hope that someone
can suggest a better method than this:

function getaddr () {
hst=$(ping -c 1 -w 1 $1 | grep PING) # Extract line with IP addy
hst=${hst#*\(} # Delete up to opening bracket
hst=${hst%%\)*} # Delete after closing bracket
echo $hst
}

$ getaddr anvil # This name is in /etc/hosts
192.168.11.3

$ getaddr www.bbc.co.uk # This lookup uses the DNS
212.58.224.88

--
Dave Farrance
.

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