4.3BSD-Reno/src/usr.bin/write/write.1

.\" Copyright (c) 1989 The Regents of the University of California.
.\" All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by
.\" Jef Poskanzer and Craig Leres of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
.\"
.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted
.\" provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
.\" duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation,
.\" advertising materials, and other materials related to such
.\" distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed
.\" by the University of California, Berkeley.  The name of the
.\" University may not be used to endorse or promote products derived
.\" from this software without specific prior written permission.
.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR
.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED
.\" WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
.\"
.\"	@(#)write.1	6.3 (Berkeley) 11/21/89
.\"
.TH WRITE 1 "November 21, 1989"
.UC 4
.SH NAME
write - send a message to another user
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B write user
[
.B ttyname
]
.ft R
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I Write
allows you to communicate with other users, by copying lines from
your terminal to theirs.
.PP
When you run the
.I write
command, the user you are writing to gets a message of the form:
.sp
.nf
.ti +5
Message from yourname@yourhost on yourtty at hh:mm ...
.fi
.sp
Any further lines you enter will be copied to the specified user's
terminal.
If the other user wants to reply, they must run
.I write
as well.
.PP
When you are done, type an end-of-file or interrupt character.
The other user will see the message ``EOF'' indicating that the
conversation is over.
.PP
You can prevent people (other than the super-user) from writing to you
with the
.IR mesg (1)
command.
Some commands, for example
.I nroff
and
.IR pr ,
disallow writing automatically, so that your output isn't overwritten.
.PP
If the user you want to write to is logged in on more than one terminal,
you can specify which terminal to write to by specifying the terminal
name as the second operand to the
.I write
command.
Alternatively, you can let
.I write
select one of the terminals \- it will pick the one with the shortest
idle time.
This is so that if the user is logged in at work and also dialed up from
home, the message will go to the right place.
.PP
The traditional protocol for writing to someone is that the string ``-o'',
either at the end of a line or on a line by itself, means that it's the
other person's turn to talk.
The string ``o-o'' means that the person believes the conversation to be
over.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
mesg(1), talk(1), who(1)