What is the purpose of the -oA option in Nmap?

• A. Saves output in only one format.
• B. Saves the output in all three formats (normal, XML, and grepable) with a common basename.
• C. Saves only to a text file.
• D. Outputs results to standard output only.

Answer: (B)

The option -oA is used when you want to capture all of Nmap's output formats in one go so you can store and reuse the data easily. It saves the results in three formats—normal text, XML, and grepable—using the same base filename. For example, supplying a base name like scan-results will produce scan-results.nmap, scan-results.xml, and scan-results.gnmap. This consistency makes it much easier to automate processing with scripts or tools that expect any of those formats, since they all share the same base name. The -oA option is a convenience that effectively runs -oN -oX -oG together, so you don’t need to invoke multiple commands. It writes to files rather than just printing to standard output, though you can still redirect or view individual formats if desired.