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 super-user) from
writing to you with the mesg(1) command. Some
commands, for example nroff(1) and pr(1), may 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.
Copyright (c) 1989, 1993
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by
Jef Poskanzer and Craig Leres of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
must display the following acknowledgement:
This product includes software developed by the University of
California, Berkeley and its contributors.
4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
SUCH DAMAGE.
@(#)write.1
8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
Modified for Linux, Sun Mar 12 10:21:01 1995, faith@cs.unc.edu