4.2BSD/usr/man/man1/finger.1

.TH FINGER 1 "18 January 1983"
.UC 4
.SH NAME
finger \- user information lookup program
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B finger
[
options
] name ...
.SH DESCRIPTION
By default
.I finger
lists the login name, full name, terminal name and write status
(as a '*' before the terminal name if write permission is denied),
idle time, login time, and office location and phone number
(if they are known) for each current UNIX user.
(Idle time is minutes if it is a single integer, hours and minutes if a ':'
is present, or days and hours if a 'd' is present.)
.PP
A longer format also exists and is used by
.I finger
whenever a list of peoples names is given.  (Account names as well as
first and last names of users are accepted.)
This format is multi-line, and includes all the information described above
as well as the user's home
directory and login shell, any plan which the person has placed in the file
.I \&.plan
in their home
directory, and the project on which they are working from the file
.I \&.project
also in the home directory.
.PP
.I Finger
options include:
.TP
.B \-m
Match arguments only on user name.
.TP
.B \-l
Force long output format.
.TP
.B \-p
Suppress printing of the
.I \&.plan
files
.TP
.B \-s
Force short output format.
.SH FILES
.ta 2i
/etc/utmp	who file
.br
/etc/passwd	for users names, offices, ...
.br
/usr/adm/lastlog	last login times
.br
~/.plan	plans
.br
~/.project	projects
.SH "SEE ALSO"
w(1), who(1)
.SH AUTHOR
Earl T. Cohen
.SH BUGS
Only the first line of the
.I .project
file is printed.
.PP
The encoding of the gcos field is UCB dependent \- it knows that an office
`197MC' is `197M Cory Hall', and that `529BE' is `529B Evans Hall'.
.PP
A user information data base is in the works and will radically alter
the way the information that
.I finger
uses is stored.  Finger will require extensive modification when
this is implemented.