@ jacob

just t say thanks for that, it did work well.

can i just ask if any one can show me how to get the real name of logged in user from the finger command.

when I ran the following command:

finger userLogingName

i got the resul in the following format

Login: xxxxxx Name: yyy xxx
Directory:/home/xxxxxx shell: /bin/bash
on since wednesday 30......
No mail
No plan



but my issue is how to i GET only the name from this output, many thanks