Network-commands/finger

Description

User information lookup program

Compatibility

Usage

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

Options

-s

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.

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 "(messagesoff)" 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

Prevents 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.

Example

$ finger
Login     Name       Tty      Idle  Login Time   Office     Office Phone
aldeid    aldeid     tty7     1:15  Sep 10 05:08 (:0)
aldeid    aldeid     pts/0          Sep 10 06:07 (:0.0)