NAME
nwrite - enhanced write
SYNOPSIS
nwrite [-i minutes] [-a] user[.ttyname] [user[.ttyname] ...]
DESCRIPTION
nwrite copies lines from your terminal to the terminals of one or more
users. When called, it begins copying lines you type to the
recipient’s terminal(tty). Before sending the first line of text,
nwrite prepends the message
Message from <name> on <tty> [to user [users ...]] at <time> ...
Communication continues until an end of file is read from the terminal
or an interrupt is sent. At that point nwrite writes ‘EOF’ (or ‘EOF
(sendername)’ if whoeof is set) on the other terminal and exits.
If you want to write to a user who is logged in more than once, the
ttyname argument may be used to indicate the appropriate terminal name,
OR, you can let nwrite find the first writable tty, and write to that.
Additionally, you can use the -i option to specify a number of minutes;
ttys more idle than the number you specify will be ignored when looking
for ttys to write to.
Permission to write may be denied or granted by use of the mesg
command. At the outset writing is allowed. Certain commands, in
particular nroff and pr(1) disallow messages in order to prevent messy
output.
NWRITERC
To control how incoming nwrites look to you, create a ~/.nwriterc with
lines of the form:
option value
Where value is either 0 or 1 (meaning no and yes) and option is one of:
headers
Display "user> " before each incoming line.
beep Cause the terminal to beep when the message header comes
through.
nodelay
Do not wait for the first line of input before displaying the
message header.
bold Takes the following string values:
never no bolding (default)
header message header only
tag message header and "login>" line tags
all bold everything
showtarg
Used to control the behavior of the message
header. Takes the following string values:
never never show recipient list
multi only if more than one recipient (default)
always always show recipients
whoeof When sending EOF, append username to differentiate
between many Users at once like this: "EOF
(user)".
Note that your home directory must be world executable
and the .nwriterc itself must be world readable.
EXAMPLE NWRITERC
headers 1
nodelay 0
beep 0
bold header
showtarg multi
OPTIONS
-a arguments are zeroed so that the process table
entry does not reveal who you are writing to.
(Not available on all systems.)
-i <minutes>
Ignore ttys more idle than <minutes> minutes.
FILES
/var/run/utmp
to find user
/etc/nwrite.rc
to set system default preferences
~user/.nwriterc
to obtain target’s preferences
AUTHORS
Marco Nicosia, marco@csua.berkeley.edu, Summer 1993
Aaron C. Smith, aaron@csua.berkeley.edu, Summer
1994-Spring 1995
Alan Coopersmith, alanc@csua.berkeley.edu, Summer
1995-present
Master ftp site: ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/nwrite/
SEE ALSO
mesg(1) , who(1) ,