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WRITE(1)                         User Commands                        WRITE(1)

NAME
       write - send a message to another user
SYNOPSIS
       write user [ttyname]
DESCRIPTION
       Write allows you to communicate with other users, by copying lines from
       your terminal to theirs.
       When you run the write command, the user you are writing to gets a mes-
       sage of the form:
              Message from yourname@yourhost on yourtty at hh:mm ...
       Any further lines you enter will be copied to the specified user's ter-
       minal.  If the other user wants to reply, they must run write as well.
       When you are done, type an end-of-file  or  interrupt  character.   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 automatically, so that  your  output  isn't
       overwritten.
       If  the  user you want to write to is logged in on more than one termi-
       nal, you can specify which terminal to write to by specifying the  ter-
       minal  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 message 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.
AVAILABILITY
       The write command is part of the util-linux package  and  is  available
       from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.

util-linux                        March 1995                          WRITE(1)