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. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software 16.\" must display the following acknowledgement: 17.\" This product includes software developed by the University of 18.\" California, Berkeley and its contributors. 19.\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors 20.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 21.\" without specific prior written permission. 22.\" 23.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 24.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 25.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 26.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 27.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 28.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 29.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 30.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 31.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 32.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 33.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 34.\" 35.\" @(#)write.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93 36.\" $FreeBSD$ 37.\" 38.Dd July 17, 2004 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 tty 48.Sh DESCRIPTION 49The 50.Nm 51utility allows you to communicate with other users, by copying lines from 52your terminal to theirs. 53.Pp 54When you run the 55.Nm 56command, 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 60Any further lines you enter will be copied to the specified user's 61terminal. 62If the other user wants to reply, they must run 63.Nm 64as well. 65.Pp 66When you are done, type an end-of-file or interrupt character. 67The other user will see the message 68.Ql EOF 69indicating that the 70conversation is over. 71.Pp 72You can prevent people (other than the super-user) from writing to you 73with the 74.Xr mesg 1 75command. 76.Pp 77If the user you want to write to is logged in on more than one terminal, 78you can specify which terminal to write to by specifying the terminal 79name as the second operand to the 80.Nm 81command. 82Alternatively, you can let 83.Nm 84select one of the terminals \- it will pick the one with the shortest 85idle time. 86This is so that if the user is logged in at work and also dialed up from 87home, the message will go to the right place. 88.Pp 89The traditional protocol for writing to someone is that the string 90.Ql \-o , 91either at the end of a line or on a line by itself, means that it is the 92other person's turn to talk. 93The string 94.Ql oo 95means that the person believes the conversation to be 96over. 97.Sh SEE ALSO 98.Xr mesg 1 , 99.Xr talk 1 , 100.Xr wall 1 , 101.Xr who 1 102.Sh HISTORY 103A 104.Nm 105command appeared in 106.At v1 . 107.Sh BUGS 108The sender's 109.Ev LC_CTYPE 110setting is used to determine which characters are safe to write to a 111terminal, not the receiver's (which 112.Nm 113has no way of knowing). 114.Pp 115The 116.Nm 117utility does not recognize multibyte characters. 118