NAME
finger - user information lookup program

SYNOPSIS
finger [ options ] name ...

DESCRIPTION
By default finger lists the login name, full name, terminal name
and write status (as a ‘*’ before the terminal name if write
permission is denied), idle time, login time, and office location
and phone number (if they are known) for each current UNIX user.
(Idle time is minutes if it is a single integer, hours and minutes
if a ‘:’ is present, or days and hours if a ’d’ is present.)

A longer format also exists and is used by finger whenever a list
of people’s names is given. (Account names as well as first and
last names of users are accepted.) This format is multi-line, and
includes all the information described above as well as the user’s
home directory and login shell, any plan which the person has
placed in the file .plan in their home directory, and the project
on which they are working from the file .project also in the home
directory.

Finger may be used to lookup users on a remote machine. The format
is to specify the user as "user@host." If the user name is left
off, the standard format listing is provided on the remote machine.

Finger options include:

-m Match arguments only on user name.

-l Force long output format.

-q Force brief output format.

-b Force brief output format of for specified names.

-w Allow long output of location.

-f Do not display headers.

-i Display idle time(s).

-p Suppress printing of the .plan files

-s Force short output format.

FILES
/etc/utmp who file
/etc/passwd for users names, offices, ...
/usr/adm/lastlog last login times
~/.plan plans
~/.project projects

SEE ALSO
w(1), who(1)

AUTHOR
Earl T. Cohen

BUGS
Only the first line of the .project file is printed.

There is no way to pass arguments to the remote machine as finger
uses an internet standard port.

A user information data base is in the works and will radically
alter the way the information that finger uses is stored. Finger
will require extensive modification when this is implemented.

The /usr/adm/lastlog file is not created during installation of
MachTen. Entries are not added to this file if it does not exist.
If finger attempts to reference this file and the file does not
exist, finger displays:

/usr/adm/lastlog open error.

This problem can be remedied by creating this file.

When using the MachTen window daemon, the idle times reported by
finger relate to the login shell, not the windows shell so users
appear to be very idle.