NAME

       finger — user information lookup program

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

       The finger displays information about the system users.

       Options are:

       -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 ``(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.

       -p    Prevents the -l option of finger from displaying  the  contents  of  the  “.plan”,  “.project”  and
             “.pgpkey” files.

       -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.

       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.

       If no arguments are specified, finger will print an entry for each user currently logged into the system.

       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.

       If standard output is a socket, finger will emit a carriage return (^M) before every linefeed (^J).  This
       is for processing remote finger requests when invoked by fingerd(8).

FILES

       ~/.nofinger      If  finger  finds  this  file  in  a user's home directory, it will, for finger requests
                        originating outside the local host, firmly deny the existence of that user.  For this to
                        work, the finger program, as started by fingerd(8), must be able to  see  the  .nofinger
                        file.  This  generally  means  that the home directory containing the file must have the
                        other-users-execute bit set (o+x). See chmod(1).  If you use this feature  for  privacy,
                        please test it with ``finger @localhost'' before relying on it, just in case.

       ~/.plan

       ~/.project

       ~/.pgpkey        These  files  are  printed  as  part  of  a  long-format  request. The .plan file may be
                        arbitrarily long.

SEE ALSO

       chfn(1), passwd(1), w(1), who(1)

HISTORY

       The finger command appeared in 3.0BSD.

Linux NetKit (0.17)                              August 15, 1999                                       FINGER(1)