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.\"     @(#)write.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
.\"
.TH WRITE 1 "March 1995" "util-linux" "User Commands"
.SH NAME
write \- send a message to another user
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B write
.I user
.RI [ ttyname ]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B write
allows you to communicate with other users, by copying lines from
your terminal to theirs.
.PP
When you run the
.B write
command, the user you are writing to gets a message of the form:
.PP
.RS
Message from yourname@yourhost on yourtty at hh:mm ...
.RE
.PP
Any further lines you enter will be copied to the specified user's
terminal.  If the other user wants to reply, they must run
.B write
as well.
.PP
When you are done, type an end-of-file or interrupt character.  The other
user will see the message
.B EOF
indicating that the conversation is over.
.PP
You can prevent people (other than the superuser) from writing to you with
the
.BR mesg (1)
command.  Some commands, for example
.BR nroff (1)
and
.BR pr (1),
may automatically disallow writing, so that the output they produce
isn't overwritten.
.PP
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 giving the terminal
name as the second operand to the
.B write
command.  Alternatively, you can let
.B 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.
.PP
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.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR mesg (1),
.BR talk (1),
.BR who (1)
.SH HISTORY
A
.B write
command appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.
.SH AVAILABILITY
The write command is part of the util-linux package and is available from
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.