finger - user information lookup program
finger [-hlMmops] [user ...]
finger [-l] [user@host ...]
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:
+o login name
+o user's full name
+o associated terminal name
+o idle time
+o login time
+o office location
+o 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 nonexistent
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-NNNNNN-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.
-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, unless
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 office
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
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.
chpass(1), w(1), who(1), fingerd(8)
The finger command appeared in 3.0BSD.
OpenBSD 3.6 July 27, 1991
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