Annotation of src/usr.bin/write/write.1, Revision 1.8
1.8 ! mickey 1: .\" $OpenBSD: write.1,v 1.7 2000/03/14 14:58:27 aaron Exp $
1.7 aaron 2: .\"
1.1 deraadt 3: .\" Copyright (c) 1989, 1993
4: .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
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6: .\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by
7: .\" Jef Poskanzer and Craig Leres of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
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37: .\" from: @(#)write.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
38: .\"
39: .Dd June 6, 1993
40: .Dt WRITE 1
41: .Os
42: .Sh NAME
43: .Nm write
44: .Nd send a message to another user
45: .Sh SYNOPSIS
46: .Nm write
47: .Ar user
48: .Op Ar ttyname
49: .Sh DESCRIPTION
1.7 aaron 50: .Nm
1.1 deraadt 51: allows you to communicate with other users, by copying lines from
52: your terminal to theirs.
53: .Pp
54: When you run the
1.7 aaron 55: .Nm
1.1 deraadt 56: command, the user you are writing to gets a message of the form:
57: .Pp
58: .Dl Message from yourname@yourhost on yourtty at hh:mm ...
59: .Pp
60: Any further lines you enter will be copied to the specified user's
61: terminal.
62: If the other user wants to reply, they must run
1.7 aaron 63: .Nm
1.1 deraadt 64: as well.
65: .Pp
66: When you are done, type an end-of-file or interrupt character.
67: The other user will see the message
1.7 aaron 68: .Dq EOF
69: indicating that the conversation is over.
1.1 deraadt 70: .Pp
1.7 aaron 71: You can prevent people (other than the superuser) from writing to you
1.1 deraadt 72: with the
73: .Xr mesg 1
74: command.
75: Some commands, for example
76: .Xr nroff 1
77: and
78: .Xr pr 1 ,
79: disallow writing automatically, so that your output isn't overwritten.
80: .Pp
81: If the user you want to write to is logged in on more than one terminal,
82: you can specify which terminal to write to by specifying the terminal
83: name as the second operand to the
1.7 aaron 84: .Nm
1.1 deraadt 85: command.
86: Alternatively, you can let
1.7 aaron 87: .Nm
1.1 deraadt 88: select one of the terminals \- it will pick the one with the shortest
89: idle time.
90: This is so that if the user is logged in at work and also dialed up from
91: home, the message will go to the right place.
92: .Pp
93: The traditional protocol for writing to someone is that the string
1.7 aaron 94: .Dq \-o ,
1.1 deraadt 95: either at the end of a line or on a line by itself, means that it's the
96: other person's turn to talk.
97: The string
1.7 aaron 98: .Dq oo
1.1 deraadt 99: means that the person believes the conversation to be
100: over.
101: .Sh SEE ALSO
102: .Xr mesg 1 ,
103: .Xr talk 1 ,
104: .Xr who 1
1.6 aaron 105: .Sh HISTORY
106: A
107: .Nm
108: command appeared in
1.8 ! mickey 109: .At v2 .
1.3 d 110: .Sh BUGS
111: The
1.7 aaron 112: .Dq EOF
1.3 d 113: message seen when the other
1.7 aaron 114: .Nm
1.4 aaron 115: terminates is indistinguishable from that party simply typing
1.7 aaron 116: .Dq EOF
1.3 d 117: to make you believe that any future messages did not come from them.
118: Especially messages such as:
1.7 aaron 119: .Pp
1.3 d 120: .Dl "[1] Done rm -rf *"