term% cat index.txt WRITE(1) General Commands Manual WRITE(1)
NAME
write - write to other users
SYNOPSIS
write person ...
DESCRIPTION
Write copies lines from your terminal to terminals of other persons
designated either by login name or (to circumvent occasional ambigui‐
ties) by terminal name as given by who(1). It announces to each person
your login name, your terminal, and the other persons. To respond,
each recipient should execute a corresponding write to the persons he
wants to talk to.
When you are writing to more than one person, your messages are identi‐
fied to the recipients. Writing ends upon end of file or interrupt,
and the message `EOF' is sent to the others.
Write recognizes certain commands during a conversation:
!cmd Execute a shell on the string cmd and then return to write.
:a person Add person to the list of people to whom you are talking, and
send an appropriate announcement to all parties. They must
do :a for themselves if they want to include the new person.
:d person Drop person from your list and make appropriate announce‐
ments.
:l Print a list of people to whom you are talking.
The following protocol is suggested for using write: when you first
write to another user, wait for him to write back before starting to
send. Each party should end each message with a distinctive signal—(o)
for `over' is conventional—that the other may reply. (oo) for `over
and out' is suggested when conversation is about to be terminated.
Permission to write may be denied or granted by mesg(1). Normally
writing is allowed. Certain commands, in particular nroff and pr(1)
disallow messages in order to prevent messy output.
FILES
/etc/utmp to find user
/bin/sh to execute `!'
SEE ALSO
mesg(1), who(1), mail(1)
BUGS
Messages ought to be identified when the recipient is receiving from
more than one writer, rather than when the writer is sending to more
than one recipient, but that requires cooperating processes and isn't
worth the effort.
WRITE(1)