chef knife search node for nil or empty attributes

Question

I would like to use the "knife search node" command to identify nodes that have an empty or nil automatic['domain'] attribute. Is this possible?

The domain is emtpy or nil because /etc/hosts was updated manually with the incorrect order of "ip (hostname -s) fqdn" vs "ip (fqdn) (hostname -s)".

I have attempted the following searches:

knife search node -i

"etc_passwd:MYID AND NOT domain:*"
"etc_passwd:MYID AND NOT domain:*?*"

"etc_passwd:MYID AND NOT domain:[a TO z]"
"etc_passwd:MYID AND NOT domain:[a TO z]*"
"etc_passwd:MYID AND NOT domain:[* TO *]"
"etc_passwd:MYID AND NOT domain:[* TO *]*"
"etc_passwd:MYID AND NOT domain:([0 TO 9] [a TO z] [A TO Z])"
"etc_passwd:MYID AND NOT domain:([0 TO 9] [a TO z] [A TO Z])*"

"etc_passwd:MYID AND NOT _exists_:domain"
"etc_passwd:MYID AND domain:is_empty?"
"etc_passwd:MYID AND domain:null"
"etc_passwd:MYID AND domain:nil"

This knife exec search works, however it takes a significant amount of time to run against the node list.

knife exec -E "search(:node,'etc_passwd:MYID').select{|n|n.automatic['domain'].nil?}.each{|n| puts n.name}"

Any advice or direction would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance. wcm