1.\" Copyright (c) 1989, 1993 2.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by 5.\" Jef Poskanzer and Craig Leres of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. 6.\" 7.\" %sccs.include.redist.man% 8.\" 9.\" @(#)write.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 06/06/93 10.\" 11.Dd 12.Dt WRITE 1 13.Os 14.Sh NAME 15.Nm write 16.Nd send a message to another user 17.Sh SYNOPSIS 18.Nm write 19.Ar user 20.Op Ar ttyname 21.Sh DESCRIPTION 22.Nm Write 23allows you to communicate with other users, by copying lines from 24your terminal to theirs. 25.Pp 26When you run the 27.Nm write 28command, the user you are writing to gets a message of the form: 29.Pp 30.Dl Message from yourname@yourhost on yourtty at hh:mm ... 31.Pp 32Any further lines you enter will be copied to the specified user's 33terminal. 34If the other user wants to reply, they must run 35.Nm write 36as well. 37.Pp 38When you are done, type an end-of-file or interrupt character. 39The other user will see the message 40.Ql EOF 41indicating that the 42conversation is over. 43.Pp 44You can prevent people (other than the super-user) from writing to you 45with the 46.Xr mesg 1 47command. 48Some commands, for example 49.Xr nroff 1 50and 51.Xr pr 1 , 52disallow writing automatically, so that your output isn't overwritten. 53.Pp 54If the user you want to write to is logged in on more than one terminal, 55you can specify which terminal to write to by specifying the terminal 56name as the second operand to the 57.Nm write 58command. 59Alternatively, you can let 60.Nm write 61select one of the terminals \- it will pick the one with the shortest 62idle time. 63This is so that if the user is logged in at work and also dialed up from 64home, the message will go to the right place. 65.Pp 66The traditional protocol for writing to someone is that the string 67.Ql \-o , 68either at the end of a line or on a line by itself, means that it's the 69other person's turn to talk. 70The string 71.Ql oo 72means that the person believes the conversation to be 73over. 74.Sh SEE ALSO 75.Xr mesg 1 , 76.Xr talk 1 , 77.Xr who 1 78.Sh HISTORY 79A 80.Nm 81command appeared in 82.At v6 . 83