WRITE(1) OpenBSD Reference Manual WRITE(1)NAME
write - send a message to another user
SYNOPSIS
write user [ttyname]
DESCRIPTION
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, such as pr(1), disallow writing
automatically, so that 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.
EXIT STATUS
The write utility exits with one of the following values:
0 Normal behavior.
>0 The specified user is either not logged in or not accepting
messages.
SEE ALSOmesg(1), talk(1), who(1)STANDARDS
The write utility is compliant with the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (``POSIX'')
specification.
HISTORY
A write command appeared in Version 2 AT&T UNIX.
BUGS
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 4.9 October 28, 2010 OpenBSD 4.9
