in-addr.arpa default search domains

Hi,

I observed some unexpected behavior and hope that someone can enlighten me as to what this is about:

mDNSResponder prepends IP / network based default search domains that are checked before any other search domain. E.g. 0.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa. would be used for an interface with an address in the the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet. This is done for any configured non-link-local IP address.

I tried to find any mention of an approach like this in RFCs but couldn't spot anything.

Please note that this is indeed a search domain and different from reverse-DNS lookups.

Example output of tcpdump for ping devtest:

10:02:13.850802 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 43461, offset 0, flags [none], proto UDP (17), length 92)
    192.168.1.2.52319 > 192.168.1.1.53: 54890+ [1au] A? devtest.0.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa. (64)

I was able to identify the code that adds those default IP subnet based search domains but failed to spot any indication as to what this is about: https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/mDNSResponder/blob/d5029b5/mDNSMacOSX/mDNSMacOSX.c#L4171-L4211

Does anyone here have an ideas as to what this might be about?