ping can resolve .local domains, but e.g. host can't, which is annoying when trying to resolve the IP address of a mDNS host from a e.g. script.
Fortunately, there is avahi-resolve that can do that, and is easy enough to use in scripts.

The reason I needed that was to consolidate a setup where a network scanner provides a mDNS name, but it can't be used in the SANE device path, only the IP works. So, replace the IP field in the call with "$(avahi-resolve --name -4 NAME.local | awk '{print $2}')" and voila.