Usage: whois [OPTION]... OBJECT...

-h HOST, --host HOST   connect to server HOST
-p PORT, --port PORT   connect to PORT
-I                     query whois.iana.org and follow its referral
-H                     hide legal disclaimers
      --verbose        explain what is being done
      --no-recursion   disable recursion from registry to registrar servers
      --help           display this help and exit
      --version        output version information and exit

These flags are supported by whois.ripe.net and some RIPE-like servers:
-l                     find the one level less specific match
-L                     find all levels less specific matches
-m                     find all one level more specific matches
-M                     find all levels of more specific matches
-c                     find the smallest match containing a mnt-irt attribute
-x                     exact match
-b                     return brief IP address ranges with abuse contact
-B                     turn off object filtering (show email addresses)
-G                     turn off grouping of associated objects
-d                     return DNS reverse delegation objects too
-i ATTR[,ATTR]...      do an inverse look-up for specified ATTRibutes
-T TYPE[,TYPE]...      only look for objects of TYPE
-K                     only primary keys are returned
-r                     turn off recursive look-ups for contact information
-R                     force to show local copy of the domain object even
                       if it contains referral
-a                     also search all the mirrored databases
-s SOURCE[,SOURCE]...  search the database mirrored from SOURCE
-g SOURCE:FIRST-LAST   find updates from SOURCE from serial FIRST to LAST
-t TYPE                request template for object of TYPE
-v TYPE                request verbose template for object of TYPE
-q [version|sources|types]  query specified server info