Name

finger

Synopsis

Provides information about a user on a remote system.

Syntax

finger [-l] [username]@computername [...]

Options

-l

Verbose output.

[ username ]@computername

The user you want to finger on the remote system—that is, the user about whom you want to obtain information. If username is omitted, then finger obtains information concerning all users on the remote system.

Examples

In general, the output to the finger command will depend on the system being queried. For example, here are the instructions displayed when using finger on a hypothetical Unix host at university BlahBlah.edu and the results of fingering a user named mitch:

                     finger help@blahblah.edu
[blahblah.edu]
Welcome to the finger daemon at blahblah.edu! By default, the finger command 
displays in multi-column format the following information about each logged-in
user:
  o   User Name
  o   Nickname, you can use this to send to 
         nickname_lastname@blahblah.edu.
  o   The send_email_to field is the address to use 
         to send this person email.
  o   Campus address
  o   Campus phone
  o   Project
We don't show login info, or idle time since these ids never actually login, 
this is a client-server system.

Different types of queries:
   alias/netid lookup - finger jwh2@blahblah.edu
   name lookup - finger howell@blahblah.edu
                 finger jim@blahblah.edu

If you get a message that says “Too many returns for your query” then you will have to refine your query:

                     finger mitch@blahblah.edu [blahblah.edu] Information from BlahBlah's Network Identity Directory... ----------------------------------------------------- ...

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