WRITE(1)            Linux Programmer's Manual            WRITE(1)

NAME
       write - send a message to another user

SYNOPSIS
       write user [ttyname]

DESCRIPTION
       Write allows you to communicate with other users, by copy-
       ing 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  speci-
       fied  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  char-
       acter.  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 auto-
       matically, 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 mes-
       sage 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.

SEE ALSO
       mesg(1), talk(1), who(1)

HISTORY
       A write command appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.

                          12 March 1995                         1