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| .\" @(#)write.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93 |
| .\" |
| .TH WRITE 1 "March 1995" "util-linux" "User Commands" |
| .SH NAME |
| write \- send a message to another user |
| .SH SYNOPSIS |
| .B write |
| .I user |
| .RI [ ttyname ] |
| .SH DESCRIPTION |
| .B write |
| allows you to communicate with other users, by copying lines from |
| your terminal to theirs. |
| .PP |
| When you run the |
| .B write |
| command, the user you are writing to gets a message of the form: |
| .PP |
| .RS |
| Message from yourname@yourhost on yourtty at hh:mm ... |
| .RE |
| .PP |
| Any further lines you enter will be copied to the specified user's |
| terminal. If the other user wants to reply, they must run |
| .B write |
| as well. |
| .PP |
| When you are done, type an end-of-file or interrupt character. The other |
| user will see the message |
| .B EOF |
| indicating that the conversation is over. |
| .PP |
| You can prevent people (other than the superuser) from writing to you with |
| the |
| .BR mesg (1) |
| command. Some commands, for example |
| .BR nroff (1) |
| and |
| .BR pr (1), |
| may automatically disallow writing, so that the output they produce |
| isn't overwritten. |
| .PP |
| 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 giving the terminal |
| name as the second operand to the |
| .B write |
| command. Alternatively, you can let |
| .B write |
| 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. |
| .PP |
| 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 `oo' means that the person |
| believes the conversation to be over. |
| .SH "SEE ALSO" |
| .BR mesg (1), |
| .BR talk (1), |
| .BR who (1) |
| .SH HISTORY |
| A |
| .B write |
| command appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX. |
| .SH AVAILABILITY |
| The write command is part of the util-linux package and is available from |
| https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/. |