finger

 

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 FINGER(1)               System General Commands Manual               FINGER(1)
 
NAME
      finger - user information lookup program
 
SYNOPSIS
      finger [-lmsp] [user ...] [user@host ...]
 
DESCRIPTION
      The finger displays information about the system users.
 
      Options are:
 
      -s    Finger displays the user's login name, real name, terminal name and
            write status (as a ``*'' after the terminal name if write permis­
            sion is denied), idle time, login time, office location and office
            phone number.
 
            Login time is displayed as month, day, hours and minutes, unless
            more than six months ago, in which case the year is displayed
            rather than the hours and minutes.
 
            Unknown devices as well as nonexistent idle and login times are
            displayed as single asterisks.
 
      -l    Produces a multi-line format displaying all of the information
            described for the -s option as well as the user's home directory,
            home phone number, login shell, mail status, and the contents of
            the files ``.plan'', ``.project'', ``.pgpkey'' and ``.forward''
            from the user's home directory.
 
            Phone numbers specified as eleven digits are printed as ``+N-NNN-
            NNN-NNNN''.  Numbers specified as ten or seven digits are printed
            as the appropriate subset of that string.  Numbers specified as
            five digits are printed as ``xN-NNNN''.  Numbers specified as four
            digits are printed as ``xNNNN''.
 
            If write permission is denied to the device, the phrase ``(messages
            off)'' is appended to the line containing the device name.  One
            entry per user is displayed with the -l option; if a user is logged
            on multiple times, terminal information is repeated once per login.
 
            Mail status is shown as ``No Mail.'' if there is no mail at all,
            ``Mail last read DDD MMM ## HH:MM YYYY (TZ)'' if the person has
            looked at their mailbox since new mail arriving, or ``New mail
            received ...'', ``  Unread since ...'' if they have new mail.
 
      -p    Prevents the -l option of finger from displaying the contents of
            the ``.plan'', ``.project'' and ``.pgpkey'' files.
 
      -m    Prevent matching of user names.  User is usually a login name; how­
            ever, matching will also be done on the users' real names, unless
            the -m option is supplied.  All name matching performed by finger
            is case insensitive.
 
      If no options are specified, finger defaults to the -l style output if
      operands are provided, otherwise to the -s style.  Note that some fields
      may be missing, in either format, if information is not available for
      them.
 
      If no arguments are specified, finger will print an entry for each user
      currently logged into the system.
 
      Finger may be used to look up users on a remote machine.  The format is
      to specify a user as ``user@host'', or ``@host'', where the default out­
      put format for the former is the -l style, and the default output format
      for the latter is the -s style.  The -l option is the only option that
      may be passed to a remote machine.
 
      If standard output is a socket, finger will emit a carriage return (^M)
      before every linefeed (^J). This is for processing remote finger requests
      when invoked by fingerd(8).
 
FILES
      ~/.nofinger      If finger finds this file in a user's home directory, it
                       will, for finger requests originating outside the local
                       host, firmly deny the existence of that user.  For this
                       to work, the finger program, as started by fingerd(8),
                       must be able to see the .nofinger file. This generally
                       means that the home directory containing the file must
                       have the other-users-execute bit set (o+w). See
                       chmod(1).  If you use this feature for privacy, please
                       test it with ``finger @localhost'' before relying on it,
                       just in case.
 
      ~/.plan
 
      ~/.project
 
      ~/.pgp           These files are printed as part of a long-format
                       request. The .project file is limited to one line; the
                       .plan file may be arbitrarily long.
 
SEE ALSO
      chfn(1), passwd(1), w(1), who(1)
 
 HISTORY
      The finger command appeared in 3.0BSD.
 
 Linux NetKit (0.17)             August 15, 1999            Linux NetKit (0.17)

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