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WRITE(1)

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NAME    [Toc]    [Back]

     write - send a message to another user

SYNOPSIS    [Toc]    [Back]

     write user [ttyname]

DESCRIPTION    [Toc]    [Back]

     write allows you to communicate with other users, by copying
lines from
     your terminal to theirs.

     When  you run the write command, the user you are writing to
gets a message
 of the form:

           Message from yourname@yourhost on yourtty at hh:mm ...

     Any  further lines you enter will be copied to the specified
user's terminal.
  If the other user wants to reply, they must run  write
as well.

     When  you are done, type an end-of-file or interrupt character.  The other
     user will see the message ``EOF'' indicating that  the  conversation is
     over.

     You can prevent people (other than the superuser) from writing to you
     with  the  mesg(1)  command.   Some  commands,  for  example
nroff(1) and pr(1),
     disallow  writing  automatically,  so that your output isn't
overwritten.

     If the user you want to write to is logged in on  more  than
one terminal,
     you can specify which terminal to write to by specifying the
terminal
     name as the second operand to the write  command.   Alternatively, you can
     let write select one of the terminals - it will pick the one
with the
     shortest idle time.  This is so that if the user  is  logged
in at work and
     also  dialed  up from home, the message will go to the right
place.

     The traditional protocol for writing to someone is that  the
string
     ``-o'',  either at the end of a line or on a line by itself,
means that
     it's the other person's turn to  talk.   The  string  ``oo''
means that the
     person believes the conversation to be over.

SEE ALSO    [Toc]    [Back]

      
      
     mesg(1), talk(1), who(1)

HISTORY    [Toc]    [Back]

     A write command appeared in Version 2 AT&T UNIX.

BUGS    [Toc]    [Back]

     The  ``EOF'' message seen when the other write terminates is
indistinguishable
 from that party simply typing ``EOF'' to make  you
believe that
     any future messages did not come from them.  Especially messages such as:

           [1]    Done                   rm -rf *

OpenBSD      3.6                           June      6,      1993
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