Copyright (c) 1985 The Regents of the University of California.
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted
provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation,
advertising materials, and other materials related to such
distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed
by the University of California, Berkeley. The name of the
University may not be used to endorse or promote products derived
from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

@(#)whois.1 6.3 (Berkeley) 09/26/88

C 6 whois - DARPA Internet user name directory service whois name

whois help Produces a helpful message similar to the following:

Please enter a name or a handle (``ident"), such as ``Smith" or ``SRI-NIC". Starting with a period forces a name-only search; starting with exclamation point forces handle-only. Examples:

 Smith [looks for name or handle SMITH ]
 !SRI-NIC [looks for handle SRI-NIC only ]
 .Smith, John [looks for name JOHN SMITH only ]

Adding ``..." to the argument will match anything from that point, e.g. ``ZU..." will match ZUL, ZUM, etc.

To have the ENTIRE membership list of a group or organization, if you are asking about a group or org, shown with the record, use an asterisk character `*' directly preceding the given argument. [CAUTION: If there are a lot of members this will take a long time!] You may of course use exclamation point and asterisk, or a period and asterisk together.

RFC 812: Nicname/Whois