bsd man page for finger

FINGER(1)						      General Commands Manual							 FINGER(1)

NAME
       finger - user information lookup program

SYNOPSIS
       finger [ -lmsp ] [user [@host] ...]

DESCRIPTION
       The finger command has two basic output formats providing essentially the same information.

       The  -s	option	of finger displays the user's login name, real name, terminal name and write status (as a ``*'' after the terminal name if
       write permission is denied), idle time, login time, office location and office phone number.

       Idle time is in minutes if it is a single integer, hours and minutes if a ``:'' is present, or days if a ``d'' is present.  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.

       The -l option produces a multi-line format displaying all of the information described for the -s option as well as the user's home  direc-
       tory, home phone number, login shell, and the contents of the files ``.plan'' and ``.project'' from the user's home directory.

       If  idle time is at least a minute and less than a day, it is presented in the form ``hh:mm''.  Idle times greater than a day are presented
       as ``d day[s] hh:mm''.

       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''.

       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.

       The -p option prevents the -l option of finger from displaying the contents of the ``.plan'' and ``.project'' files.

       Note that some fields may be missing, in either format, if information is not available for them.

       If no operands are specified, finger will print an entry for each user currently logged into the system.  If no options are specified, fin-
       ger defaults to the -l style output if operands are provided, otherwise to the -s style.

       User  is  usually  a  login name; however, 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.

       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
       output  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.

SEE ALSO
       chpass(1), w(1), who(1), getpwent(3)

4th Berkeley Distribution					   May 18, 1989 							 FINGER(1)