1.\" Copyright (c) 1989, 1993 2.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by 5.\" Jef Poskanzer and Craig Leres of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. 6.\" 7.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 8.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 9.\" are met: 10.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 11.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 12.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 13.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 14.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 15.\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors 16.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 17.\" without specific prior written permission. 18.\" 19.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 20.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 21.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 22.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 23.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 24.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 25.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 26.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 27.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 28.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 29.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 30.\" 31.\" @(#)write.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93 32.\" $FreeBSD$ 33.\" 34.Dd February 13, 2012 35.Dt WRITE 1 36.Os 37.Sh NAME 38.Nm write 39.Nd send a message to another user 40.Sh SYNOPSIS 41.Nm 42.Ar user 43.Op Ar tty 44.Sh DESCRIPTION 45The 46.Nm 47utility allows you to communicate with other users, by copying lines from 48your terminal to theirs. 49.Pp 50When you run the 51.Nm 52command, the user you are writing to gets a message of the form: 53.Pp 54.Dl Message from yourname@yourhost on yourtty at hh:mm ... 55.Pp 56Any further lines you enter will be copied to the specified user's 57terminal. 58If the other user wants to reply, they must run 59.Nm 60as well. 61.Pp 62When you are done, type an end-of-file or interrupt character. 63The other user will see the message 64.Ql EOF 65indicating that the 66conversation is over. 67.Pp 68You can prevent people (other than the super-user) from writing to you 69with the 70.Xr mesg 1 71command. 72.Pp 73If the user you want to write to is logged in on more than one terminal, 74you can specify which terminal to write to by specifying the terminal 75name as the second operand to the 76.Nm 77command. 78Alternatively, you can let 79.Nm 80select one of the terminals \- it will pick the one with the shortest 81idle time. 82This is so that if the user is logged in at work and also dialed up from 83home, the message will go to the right place. 84.Pp 85The traditional protocol for writing to someone is that the string 86.Ql \-o , 87either at the end of a line or on a line by itself, means that it is the 88other person's turn to talk. 89The string 90.Ql oo 91means that the person believes the conversation to be 92over. 93.Sh SEE ALSO 94.Xr mesg 1 , 95.Xr talk 1 , 96.Xr wall 1 , 97.Xr who 1 98.Sh HISTORY 99A 100.Nm 101command appeared in 102.At v1 . 103.Sh BUGS 104The sender's 105.Ev LC_CTYPE 106setting is used to determine which characters are safe to write to a 107terminal, not the receiver's (which 108.Nm 109has no way of knowing). 110