NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
The
utility allows you to communicate with other users, by copying lines from
your terminal to theirs.
When you run the
command, the user you are writing to gets a message of the form:
Any further lines you enter will be copied to the specified user's
terminal.
If the other user wants to reply, they must run
as well.
When you are done, type an end-of-file or interrupt character.
The other user will see the message
indicating that the
conversation is over.
You can prevent people (other than the super-user) from writing to you
with the
mesg(1)
command.
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
command.
Alternatively, you can let
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
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
means that the person believes the conversation to be
over.
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
A
command appeared in