FINGER(1) General Commands Manual FINGER(1)NAME
finger - user information lookup program
SYNOPSIS
finger [ options ] name ...
DESCRIPTION
By default 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.)
A longer format also exists and is used by finger whenever a list of people's 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 .plan in their home directory, and the project on which they
are working from the file .project also in the home directory.
Finger may be used to lookup users on a remote machine. The format is to specify the user as ``user@host.'' If the user name is left off,
the standard format listing is provided on the remote machine.
Finger options include:
-m Match arguments only on user name.
-l Force long output format.
-p Suppress printing of the .plan files
-s Force short output format.
FILES
/etc/utmp who file
/etc/passwd for users names, offices, ...
/usr/adm/lastlog last login times
~/.plan plans
~/.project projects
SEE ALSO chfn(1), w(1), who(1).
AUTHOR
Earl T. Cohen
BUGS
Only the first line of the .project file is printed.
There is no way to pass arguments to the remote machine as finger uses an internet standard port.
4th Berkeley Distribution May 10, 1986 FINGER(1)
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FINGER(1) BSD 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; 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.
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
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.
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+x). 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
~/.pgpkey 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)