Sometimes we need to work with multiple hosts and perform more than one scan, but having to type a list of targets in the command line with each scan is not very practical. Fortunately, Nmap supports the loading of targets from an external file.
This recipe shows how to scan the targets loaded from an external file by using Nmap.
Enter the list of targets into a text file, each separated by a new line, tab, or space(s):
$cat targets.txt 192.168.1.23 192.168.1.12
To load the targets from the file targets.txt, the following command can be used:
$ nmap -iL targets.txt
This feature can be combined with any scan option or method, except for exclusion rules set by --exclude or --exclude-file. The option flags --exclude and --exclude-file will be ignored when -iL is used.