Leopard DNS – correct practice

How do I make DNS resolve names that are not fully qualified? I have foo.com setup. I have a machine called macfile I have an A record for macfile.foo.com and an alias for macfile -> macfile.foo.com I have also tried simply an A record for macfile. In both cases the name macfile does not resolve correctly. I have to add the FQDN suffix foo.com which kind of takes the fun out of having my own DNS. What is the correct way to do this? Am I missing the point of what an alias is for? Thanks any DNS Gurus out there. It's doing m head in.