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write(1)			 User Commands			      write(1)

NAME
       write - write to another user

SYNOPSIS
       write user [terminal]

DESCRIPTION
       The write utility reads lines from the user's standard input and writes
       them to the terminal of another user. When first invoked, it writes the
       message:

	 Message from sender-login-id (sending-terminal) [date]...

       to  user.  When	it  has	 successfully  completed  the  connection, the
       sender's terminal will be alerted  twice	 to  indicate  that  what  the
       sender is typing is being written to the recipient's terminal.

       If the recipient wants to reply, this can be accomplished by typing

	 write sender-login-id [sending-terminal]

       upon receipt of the initial message. Whenever a line of input as delim‐
       ited by a NL, EOF, or EOL special character  is	accumulated  while  in
       canonical input mode, the accumulated data will be written on the other
       user's terminal. Characters are processed as follows:

	   o	  Typing the alert character will write the alert character to
		  the recipient's terminal.

	   o	  Typing  the  erase  and  kill	 characters  will  affect  the
		  sender's terminal in the manner described by the termios(3C)
		  interface.

	   o	  Typing  the  interrupt  or end-of-file characters will cause
		  write to write  an  appropriate  message  (EOT\n  in	the  C
		  locale) to the recipient's terminal and exit.

	   o	  Typing  characters  from  LC_CTYPE  classifications print or
		  space will cause those characters to be sent to the  recipi‐
		  ent's terminal.

	   o	  When	and  only  when the stty iexten local mode is enabled,
		  additional special control characters and multi-byte or sin‐
		  gle-byte characters are processed as printable characters if
		  their wide character equivalents are printable.

	   o	  Typing other non-printable characters will cause them to  be
		  written  to  the  recipient's	 terminal  as follows: control
		  characters will appear as a `^' followed by the  appropriate
		  ASCII	 character, and characters with the high-order bit set
		  will appear in "meta" notation. For example, `\003' is  dis‐
		  played as `^C' and `\372' as `M−z'.

       To  write to a user who is logged in more than once, the terminal argu‐
       ment can be used to indicate which terminal to write to. Otherwise, the
       recipient's  terminal  is the first writable instance of the user found
       in /usr/adm/utmpx, and the  following  informational  message  will  be
       written	to the sender's standard output, indicating which terminal was
       chosen:

	 user is logged on more than one place.
	 You are connected to terminal.
	 Other locations are:terminal

       Permission to be a recipient of	a  write  message  can	be  denied  or
       granted	by  use	 of  the mesg utility. However, a user's privilege may
       further constrain the domain of accessibility of	 other	users'	termi‐
       nals.  The  write utility will fail when the user lacks the appropriate
       privileges to perform the requested action.

       If the character ! is found at the beginning of a line, write calls the
       shell to execute the rest of the line as a command.

       write  runs  setgid()  (see setuid(2)) to the group ID tty, in order to
       have write permissions on other users' terminals.

       The following protocol is suggested for using  write:  when  you	 first
       write  to  another user, wait for them to write back before starting to
       send. Each person should end a message with a distinctive signal	 (that
       is,  (o)	 for  over)  so that the other person knows when to reply. The
       signal (oo) (for over and out) is suggested when conversation is to  be
       terminated.

OPERANDS
       The following operands are supported:

       user	   User (login) name of the person to whom the message will be
		   written. This operand must be of the form returned  by  the
		   who(1) utility.

       terminal	   Terminal  identification in the same format provided by the
		   who utility.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
       See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment  variables
       that  affect  the  execution  of write: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MES‐
       SAGES, and NLSPATH.

EXIT STATUS
       The following exit values are returned:

       0     Successful completion.

       >0    The addressed user is not logged on or the addressed user	denies
	     permission.

FILES
       /var/adm/utmpx	 User and accounting information for write

       /usr/bin/sh	 Bourne shell executable file

ATTRIBUTES
       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       ┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
       │      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     │	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   │
       ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │Availability		     │SUNWcs			   │
       ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │CSI			     │Enabled			   │
       ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │Interface Stability	     │Committed			   │
       ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │Standard		     │See standards(5).		   │
       └─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘

SEE ALSO
       mail(1),	  mesg(1),   pr(1),   sh(1),   talk(1),	  who(1),   setuid(2),
       termios(3C), attributes(5), environ(5), standards(5)

DIAGNOSTICS
       user is not logged on

	   The person you are trying to write to is not logged on.

       Permission denied

	   The person you are trying to write to denies that permission	 (with
	   mesg).

       Warning: cannot respond, set mesg-y

	   Your	 terminal is set to mesg n and the recipient cannot respond to
	   you.

       Can no longer write to user

	   The recipient has denied permission (mesg n) after you had  started
	   writing.

SunOS 5.11			  3 Nov 2000			      write(1)
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