ghosts

ghosts is a utility to evaluate, compare, and format hosts files. It's written in Go.

Here is what ghosts does:

• Summarize any hosts file retrieved over HTTP, or from a local file.
• Compare two hosts files, and determine their intersection.
• Compare a reference hosts file with a list of hosts presently in your system clipboard.
• List the tally of TLDs in the hosts file.
• Output the hosts as a plain list of domains, or with IP4 pefix.
• Sort the hosts coherently by domain, TLD, subdomain, subsubdomain, and so on.

Getting started

Get help just as you might expect

$ ./ghosts -h                                                                                             
Usage of ./ghosts:
  -c string
        Hosts list to compare. A full URL, or a local file.
        Use the -m option for the main comparison list.
        Use the -clip option to use what is on the system clipboard.
  -clip
        The comparison hosts are in the system clipboard
  -d    Include default hosts at the top of file.
  -intersection
        Return the list of intersection hosts? (default false)
  -ip string
        Localhost IP address (default "0.0.0.0")
  -m string
        The main list of hosts to analyze, or serve as a basis for comparison.
        A full URL, or a local file.
         (default "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts")
  -noheader
        Remove the file header from output? (default false)
  -o    Return the list of hosts? (default false)
  -p    Return a plain output list of hosts, with no IP address prefix? (default false)
  -s    Sort the hosts? (default false)
  -stats
        display stats? (default true)
  -tld
        Return the list of TLD and their tally (default false)
  -unique
        List the unique domains in the comparison list

Summarize statistics from any hosts file

If you specify no hosts file, by default a summary of StevenBlack/hosts is produced.

$ ./ghosts
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Base hosts file summary:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Location: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts
Domains: 54,702
Bytes: 1.7 MB
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Specify any hosts file to summarize by using the -m option, like this:

$ ./ghosts -m https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/hosts
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Base hosts file summary:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Location: https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/hosts
Domains: 14,401
Bytes: 417 kB
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Additionally produce a top-level-domain (TLD) report by using the -tld option, like this:

$ ./ghosts -m https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/hosts -tld
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Base hosts file summary:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Location: https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/hosts
Domains: 14,401
Bytes: 417 kB
TLD tally:
   com: 8,683
   net: 2,231
   info: 479
   ru: 291
   de: 232
   pl: 181
   org: 174
   fr: 147
   nl: 140
   at: 133
   uk: 117

skipping many lines for brevity 

   bo: 1
   rw: 1
   guru: 1
   ae: 1
   men: 1
   ga: 1
   watch: 1
   ac: 1

Compare two hosts files, local or remote, and assess their intersection by specifying -m <location> option for the main hosts file and -c <location> option for the second comparison file.

Let's compare the someonewhocares.org hosts file (14,401 domains) to the one at mvps.org (10,473 domains). The basic report tells us there are 1,548 domains in the interseation of the two.

$ ./ghosts -m https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/hosts -c http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Base hosts file summary:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Location: https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/hosts
Domains: 14,401
Bytes: 417 kB
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Compared hosts file summary:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Location: http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt
Domains: 10,473
Bytes: 392 kB
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Intersection: 1,548 domains

Compare two hosts files, local or remote, and LIST their intersection by specifying -m <location> option for the main hosts file, -c <location> option for the second comparison file, and add the --intersection flag to get the detailed list of the intersecting domains.

Let's compare the someonewhocares.org hosts file (14,401 domains) to the one at mvps.org (10,473 domains). The basic report shows us all 1,548 domains in the interseation of the two.

$ ./ghosts -m https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/hosts -c http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt --intersection
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Base hosts file summary:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Location: https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/hosts
Domains: 14,401
Bytes: 417 kB
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Compared hosts file summary:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Location: http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt
Domains: 10,473
Bytes: 392 kB
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
intersection: [006.free-counter.co.uk 102.112.2o7.net 102.122.2o7.net 122.2o7.net 192.168.112.2o7.net 
1ca.cqcounter.com 1uk.cqcounter.com 1up.us.intellitxt.com 1us.cqcounter.com .... long list ]
Intersection: 1,548 domains

Compare two hosts files, local or remote, and list what's unique in the second file by specifying -m <location> option for the main hosts file, -c <location> option for the second comparison file, and add the --unique flag to get the list of domains in the comparison file that are not in the main hoss file.

Output a list of domains in hosts format, or as a plaintext list

To list domains, use the -o [optional file] option. If you provide no file mame, the list goes to stdout.

To sort the domains, use the -s flag.

Hosts format output

The output is in hosts format by default. The default IP address is 0.0.0.0, and you can change that with the -ip option. for example, -ip 127.0.0.1 will list the hosts with a 127.0.0.1 prefix.

The hosts output will include the header of the original source file. This header typically includes information about the author, and sometimes includes a copyright statement. To not include the header, use the -noheader flag.

To include the list of default hosts at the top of the hosts output, use the d flag. By default the list of hosts does not include the loopback hosts at the top of the list.

These are the default hosts that will be included with the -d flag.

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain
127.0.0.1 local
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
::1 ip6-localhost
::1 ip6-loopback
fe80::1%lo0 localhost
ff00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts
0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0

Plaintext domains output

To get a plaintext list of domains, use the -p flag.

Running the tests

$ go test runs the test suite.

Contributing

TBA.

License

MIT.

Related repositories

• StevenBlack/hosts is my amalgamated hosts file, with custom variants, from various curated sources.
• StevenBlack/rhosts hosts tools, written in Rust, just getting started on that.