FINGER(1)		  BSD General Commands Manual		     FINGER(1)

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 permis-
	   sion 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; how-
	   ever, 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 out-
     put 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 .project file is limited to one line; 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		   Linux NetKit (0.17)