FINGER(1) BSD Reference Manual FINGER(1)NAMEfinger - user information lookup program
SYNOPSISfinger [-hlMmops] [user ...]
finger [-l] [user@host ...]
DESCRIPTION
The finger utility displays information about local and remote system
users. By default, the following information is displayed about each user
currently logged-in to the local host:
+ login name
+ user's full name
+ associated terminal name
+ idle time
+ login time
+ office location
+ office phone
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
the day name if less than six days, else month, day, hours and minutes,
unless more than six months ago, in which case the year is displayed
rather than the hours and minutes.
The names of terminals for which write permission is denied (see mesg(1))
are prepended with an asterisk ('*'). Unknown devices as well as nonex-
istent idle and login times are displayed as single asterisks.
The options are as follows:
-h If the -s option is also specified, the name of the remote host
is displayed instead of the office location and office phone.
-l Long format. Produces a multi-line format displaying all of the
information available from the -s option as well as the user's
home directory, home phone number, login shell, mail status, and
the contents of the ".plan" and ".project" files 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". 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 repeat-
ed 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.
-M Enable matching of user names. This is disabled by default on
systems running YP or with large password databases.
-m Prevent matching of user names. User is usually a login name;
however, matching will also be done on the users' real names, un-
less the -m option is supplied. All name matching performed by
finger is case insensitive.
-o If the -s option is also specified, the office location and of-
fice phone is displayed instead of the name of the remote host.
-p Prevents the -l option of finger from displaying the contents of
the ".plan" and ".project" files.
-s Short format (default). The information as described above is
displayed in a columnar fashion.
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.
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 for-
mat 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 ALSOchpass(1), w(1), who(1), fingerd(8)HISTORY
The finger command appeared in 3.0BSD.
MirOS BSD #10-current July 27, 1991 1
