write - write to another user
write user [ line ]
write copies lines from your terminal to that of another user. When
first called, it sends the message:
Message from yourname (tty??) [ date ]...
to the person you want to talk to. When it has successfully completed
the connection, it also sends two bells to your own terminal to indicate
that what you are typing is being sent.
The recipient of the message should write back at this point.
Communication continues until an end of file is read from the terminal,
an interrupt is sent, or the recipient has executed "mesg n". At that
point write writes EOT on the other terminal and exits.
If you want to write to a user who is logged in more than once, the line
argument may be used to indicate which line or terminal to send to (e.g.,
tty00); otherwise, the first writable instance of the user found in
/var/adm/utmp is assumed and the following message posted:
user is logged on more than one place.
You are connected to "terminal".
Other locations are:
Permission to write may be denied or granted by use of the mesg(1)
command. Writing to others is normally allowed by default. Certain
commands, such as pr(1) disallow messages in order to prevent
interference with their output. However, if the user has super-user
permissions, messages can be forced onto a write-inhibited terminal.
If the character ! is found at the beginning of a line, write calls the
shell to execute the rest of the line as a command.
write processes supplementary code set characters according to the locale
specified in the LC_CTYPE environment variable [see LANG on environ(5)].
It will detect non-printable characters before sending them to the user's
terminal. Control characters will appear as a `^' followed by the
appropriate ASCII character; characters with the high-order bit set will
appear in meta notation. For example, `\003' is displayed as `^C' and
`\372' as `M-z'.
The following protocol is suggested for using write: when you first
write to another user, wait for them to write back before starting to
send. Each person should end a message with a distinctive signal (i.e.,
(o) for ``over'') so that the other person knows when to reply. The
signal (oo) (for ``over and out'') is suggested when conversation is to
/var/adm/utmp to find user
/sbin/sh to execute !
language-specific message file [See LANG on environ(5).]
mail(1), mesg(1), pr(1), sh(1), who(1).
UX:write:ERROR:User is not logged on.
if the person you are trying to write to is not logged on.
if the person you are trying to write to denies that permission
UX:write:Warning: cannot respond, set mesg -y.
if your terminal is set to mesg n and the recipient cannot respond
UX:write:ERROR:Can no longer write to user.
if the recipient has denied permission (mesg n) after you had
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