PHP does not resolve .local dns names with gethostbyname

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I have werid problem with name resolution. I am trying to connect to active directory server. I can successfully get the ldap server address from the SRV recodrs. Then I try to resolve the dns names to IP addresses and it fails:

echo 'example.com.:' . PHP_EOL; echo gethostbyname('example.com.'); echo PHP_EOL; echo 'dc1.veracomp.local.:' . PHP_EOL; echo gethostbyname('dc1.my-company.local.'); echo PHP_EOL; echo 'nslookup dc1.my-company.local.:' . PHP_EOL; echo `nslookup dc1.my-company.local.`;

The example.com is resolved correctly, then the gethostbyname('dc1.my-company.local.') fails after a few seconds returning dc1.my-company.local. instead of the IP address. Still the same PHP script can call nslookup which correctly resolves the domain name...:

example.com.:
93.184.216.119
dc1.my-company.local.:
dc1.my-company.local.
nslookup  dc1.my-company.local.:
Server:         xxx.xxx.254.117
Address:        xxx.xxx.254.117#53
Name:   dc1.my-company.local
Address: 192.168.12.21
What is wrong here?
EDIT:
I am asking for name resolution beacuse the real problem i have is that I can connect to ldap://192.168.12.21 or to ldap://dc1.my-company.pl, but I cannot connect to ldap://dc1.my-company.local.
Unfortunatelly the SRV records for _ldap._tcp.my-company.pl returns only local addresses. I do not want to hardcode the .pl address. And I do not understand why I have to manually resolve the local addresses before passing them to Zend_Ldap as a host option. 
                Another guess is that PHP built-in function considers .local as not-valid domain - hence the error.
– Peon
                Nov 13, 2013 at 13:00
You should avoid its use in production. DNS Resolution may take from 0.5 to 4 seconds, and during this time your script is NOT being executed.
I use this one; this will be faster and more efficient:
function getAddrByHost($hosts, $timeout = 3) {
  $returnString = '';
  foreach ($hosts as $host) {
    $query = `nslookup -timeout=$timeout -retry=1 $host`;
    if (preg_match('/\nAddress: (.*)\n/', $query, $matches))
      $returnString .= trim($matches[1]) . '<br>';
    $returnString .= $host . '<br>';
  return $returnString;
$hostArray[] = 'www.example.com';
$hostArray[] = 'dc1.my-company.local';
$returnString = getAddrByHost($hostArray);
echo $returnString;
                Thanks for suggestion. I might, and probably will use your solution, but I would still like to know why PHP is not able to resolve a correct dns domain name from local scope.
– SWilk
                Nov 13, 2013 at 12:54
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