file reorg, pathnames.h, paths.h

[unix-history] / usr / src / usr.bin / finger / finger.1

.\" Copyright (c) 1989 The Regents of the University of California.
.\" All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted
.\" provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
.\" duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation,
.\" advertising materials, and other materials related to such
.\" distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed
.\" by the University of California, Berkeley.  The name of the
.\" University may not be used to endorse or promote products derived
.\" from this software without specific prior written permission.
.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR
.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED
.\" WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
.\"
.\"	@(#)finger.1	6.8 (Berkeley) %G%
.\"
.TH FINGER 1 ""
.UC 4
.SH NAME
finger \- user information lookup program
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B finger
[
.B -lmsp
] [user [@host] ...]
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.I finger
command has two basic output formats providing essentially the same
information.
.PP
The
.I -s
option of
.I finger
displays the user's login name, real name, terminal name and write
status (as a ``*'' after the terminal name if write permission is
denied), idle time, login time, office location and office phone
number.
.PP
Idle time is in minutes if it is a single integer, hours and minutes
if a ``:'' is present, or days if a ``d'' is present.
Login time is displayed as month, day, hours and minutes, unless
more than six months ago, in which case the year is displayed rather
than the hours and minutes.
.PP
Unknown devices as well as nonexistent idle and login times are
displayed as single asterisks.
.PP
The
.I -l
option produces a multi-line format displaying all of the information
described for the
.I -s
option as well as the user's home directory, login shell, and the
contents of the files
.I ``.plan''
and
.I ``.project''
from the user's home directory.
.PP
If idle time is at least a minute and less than a day, it is
presented in the form ``hh:mm''.
Idle times greater than a day are presented as ``d day[s] hh:mm''.
.PP
If write permission is denied to the device, the phrase ``(messages
off)'' is appended to the line containing the device name.
One entry per user is displayed with the
.IR -l
option; if a user is logged on multiple times, terminal information
is repeated once per login.
.PP
The
.I -p
option prevents
the
.I -l
option of
.I finger
from displaying the contents of the ``.plan'' and ``.project''
files.
.PP
Note that some fields may be missing, in either format, if information
is not available for them.
.PP
If no operands are specified,
.I finger
will print an entry for each user currently logged into the system.
If no options are specified,
.I finger
defaults to the
.I -l
style output if operands are provided, otherwise to the
.I -s
style.
.PP
.I User
is usually a login name; however, matching will also be done on the
users' real names, unless the
.I -m
option is supplied.
All name matching performed by
.I finger
is case insensitive.
.PP
.I Finger
may be used to look up users on a remote machine.
The format is to specify a
.I user
as ``user@host'', or ``@host'', where the default output
format for the former is the
.I -l
style, and the default output format for the latter is the
.IR -s
style.
The
.I -l
option is the only option that may be passed to a remote machine.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
chpass(1), w(1), who(1), getpwent(3)