1WRITE(1) Linux Programmer's Manual WRITE(1)
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6 write - send a message to another user
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9 write user [ttyname]
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12 Write allows you to communicate with other users, by copying lines from
13 your terminal to theirs.
14 When you run the write command, the user you are writing to gets a mes‐
16 sage of the form:
17 Message from yourname@yourhost on yourtty at hh:mm ...
19 Any further lines you enter will be copied to the specified user's ter‐
21 minal. If the other user wants to reply, they must run write as well.
22 When you are done, type an end-of-file or interrupt character. The
24 other user will see the message EOF indicating that the conversation is
25 over.
26 You can prevent people (other than the super-user) from writing to you
28 with the mesg(1) command. Some commands, for example nroff(1) and
29 pr(1), may disallow writing automatically, so that your output isn't
30 overwritten.
31 If the user you want to write to is logged in on more than one termi‐
33 nal, you can specify which terminal to write to by specifying the ter‐
34 minal name as the second operand to the write command. Alternatively,
35 you can let write select one of the terminals - it will pick the one
36 with the shortest idle time. This is so that if the user is logged in
37 at work and also dialed up from home, the message will go to the right
38 place.
39 The traditional protocol for writing to someone is that the string
41 `-o', either at the end of a line or on a line by itself, means that
42 it's the other person's turn to talk. The string `oo' means that the
43 person believes the conversation to be over.
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46 mesg(1), talk(1), who(1)
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49 A write command appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.
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52 The write command is part of the util-linux-ng package and is available
53 from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/.
54 12 March 1995 WRITE(1)