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
       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.

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