usr/share/man/cat1/write.0



WRITE(1)                      1989                       WRITE(1)


N\bNA\bAM\bME\bE
     write - send a message to another user

S\bSY\bYN\bNO\bOP\bPS\bSI\bIS\bS
     w\bwr\bri\bit\bte\be u\bus\bse\ber\br [ t\btt\bty\byn\bna\bam\bme\be ]

D\bDE\bES\bSC\bCR\bRI\bIP\bPT\bTI\bIO\bON\bN
     _\bW_\br_\bi_\bt_\be allows you to communicate with other users, by copying
     lines from your terminal to theirs.

     When you run the _\bw_\br_\bi_\bt_\be command, the user you are writing to
     gets a message of the form:

          Message from yourname@yourhost on yourtty at hh:mm ...

     Any further lines you enter will be copied to the specified
     user's terminal.  If the other user wants to reply, they
     must run _\bw_\br_\bi_\bt_\be as well.

     When you are done, type an end-of-file or interrupt charac-
     ter.  The other user will see the message ``EOF'' indicating
     that the conversation is over.

     You can prevent people (other than the super-user) from
     writing to you with the _\bm_\be_\bs_\bg(1) command.  Some commands, for
     example _\bn_\br_\bo_\bf_\bf and _\bp_\br, disallow writing automatically, so
     that your output isn't overwritten.

     If the user you want to write to is logged in on more than
     one terminal, you can specify which terminal to write to by
     specifying the terminal name as the second operand to the
     _\bw_\br_\bi_\bt_\be command.  Alternatively, you can let _\bw_\br_\bi_\bt_\be select one
     of the terminals - it will pick the one with the shortest
     idle time.  This is so that if the user is logged in at work
     and also dialed up from home, the message will go to the
     right place.

     The traditional protocol for writing to someone is that the
     string ``-o'', either at the end of a line or on a line by
     itself, means that it's the other person's turn to talk.
     The string ``o-o'' means that the person believes the
     conversation to be over.

S\bSE\bEE\bE A\bAL\bLS\bSO\bO
     mesg(1), talk(1), who(1)


Printed 7/27/90             November                            1