xref: /freebsd/usr.bin/write/write.1 (revision 42c159fe388a3765f69860c84183700af37aca8a)
1.\" Copyright (c) 1989, 1993
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4.\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by
5.\" Jef Poskanzer and Craig Leres of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
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35.\"     @(#)write.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
36.\" $FreeBSD$
37.\"
38.Dd June 6, 1993
39.Dt WRITE 1
40.Os
41.Sh NAME
42.Nm write
43.Nd send a message to another user
44.Sh SYNOPSIS
45.Nm
46.Ar user
47.Op Ar ttyname
48.Sh DESCRIPTION
49.Nm Write
50allows you to communicate with other users, by copying lines from
51your terminal to theirs.
52.Pp
53When you run the
54.Nm
55command, the user you are writing to gets a message of the form:
56.Pp
57.Dl Message from yourname@yourhost on yourtty at hh:mm ...
58.Pp
59Any further lines you enter will be copied to the specified user's
60terminal.
61If the other user wants to reply, they must run
62.Nm
63as well.
64.Pp
65When you are done, type an end-of-file or interrupt character.
66The other user will see the message
67.Ql EOF
68indicating that the
69conversation is over.
70.Pp
71You can prevent people (other than the super-user) from writing to you
72with the
73.Xr mesg 1
74command.
75.Pp
76If the user you want to write to is logged in on more than one terminal,
77you can specify which terminal to write to by specifying the terminal
78name as the second operand to the
79.Nm
80command.
81Alternatively, you can let
82.Nm
83select one of the terminals \- it will pick the one with the shortest
84idle time.
85This is so that if the user is logged in at work and also dialed up from
86home, the message will go to the right place.
87.Pp
88The traditional protocol for writing to someone is that the string
89.Ql \-o ,
90either at the end of a line or on a line by itself, means that it's the
91other person's turn to talk.
92The string
93.Ql oo
94means that the person believes the conversation to be
95over.
96.Sh SEE ALSO
97.Xr mesg 1 ,
98.Xr talk 1 ,
99.Xr wall 1 ,
100.Xr who 1
101.Sh HISTORY
102A
103.Nm
104command appeared in
105.At v1 .
106