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Annotated edit history of finger(1) version 2, including all changes. View license author blame.
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1 perry 1 ----
2 __NAME__
3
4
5 finger - user information lookup program
6 __SYNOPSIS__
7
8
9 finger [[-lmsp] [[user ...] [[user@host ...]
10 __DESCRIPTION__
11
12
13 The finger displays information about the system
14 users.
15
16
17 Options are:
18 -s
19
20
21 Finger displays the user's login name, real name, ter-minal name and write status (as a ``'' after the termi-nal name if write permission is denied), idle time,login time, office location and office phone number.Login time is displayed as month, day, hours and min-utes, unless more than six months ago, in which casethe year is displayed rather than the hours and min-utes.Unknown devices as well as nonexistent idle and logintimes are displayed as single asterisks.-lProduces a multi-line format displaying all of theinformation described for the -s option as well as theuser's home directory, home phone number, login shell,mail status, and the contents of the files ``.plan'', ``.project'', ``.pgpkey'' and ``.forward'' from the user's home directory.
22
23
24 Phone numbers specified as eleven digits are printed as
25 ``+N-NNN-NNN-NNNN''. Numbers specified as ten or seven
26 digits are printed as the appropriate subset of that string.
27 Numbers specified as five digits are printed as ``xN-NNNN''.
28 Numbers specified as four digits are printed as
29 ``xNNNN''.
30
31
32 If write permission is denied to the device, the phrase
33 ``(messages off)'' is appended to the line containing the
34 device name. One entry per user is displayed with the -l
35 option; if a user is logged on multiple times, terminal
36 information is repeated once per login.
37
38
39 Mail status is shown as ``No Mail.'' if there is no mail at
40 all, ``Mail last read DDD MMM ## HH:MM YYYY (TZ)'' if the
41 person has looked at their mailbox since new mail arriving,
42 or ``New mail received ...'', `` Unread since ...'' if they
43 have new mail.
44
45
46 -p
47 Prevents the -l option of finger from displaying the
48 contents of the ``.plan'', ``.project''
49 and ``.pgpkey'' files.
50
51
52 -m
53 Prevent matching of user names. User is usually a login
54 name; however, matching will also be done on the users' real
55 names, unless the -m option is supplied. All name matching
56 performed by finger is case insensi- tive.
57
58
59 If no options are specified, finger defaults to the -l style
60 output if operands are provided, otherwise to the -s style.
61 Note that some fields may be missing, in either format, if
62 information is not available for them.
63
64
65 If no arguments are specified, finger will print an entry
66 for each user currently logged into the system.
67
68
69 Finger may be used to look up users on a remote machine. The
70 format is to specify a user as ``user@host'', or
71 ``@host'', where the default output format for the
72 former is the -l style, and the default output format for
73 the latter is the -s style. The -l option is the only option
74 that may be passed to a remote machine.
75
76
77 If standard output is a socket, finger will emit a carriage
78 return (^M) before every linefeed (^J). This is for process-
79 ing remote finger requests when invoked by
80 fingerd(8).
81
82
83 __FILES__
84 ~/.nofinger
85 If finger finds this file in a user's home directory, it
86 will, for finger requests originating outside the local
87 host, firmly deny the existence of that user. For this to
88 work, the finger program, as started by fingerd(8),
89 must be able to see the .nofinger file. This
90 generally means that the home directory containing the file
91 must have the other-users-execute bit set (o+x). See
92 chmod(1). If you use this feature for privacy,
93 please test it with ``finger @localhost'' before relying on
94 it, just in case.
95
96
97 ~/.plan
98
99
100 ~/.project
101
102
103 ~/.pgp
104 These files are printed as part of a long-format request.
105 The .project file is limited to one line; the
106 .plan file may be arbitrarily long.
107
108
109 __SEE ALSO__
110
111
112 chfn(1), passwd(1), w(1),
113 who(1)
114 __HISTORY__
115
116
117 The finger command appeared in 3.0 BSD
118 .
119
120
2 perry 121 Linux !NetKit (0.17) August 15, 1999 1
1 perry 122 ----
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