NAME
   finger - user information lookup program

SYNOPSIS
   finger [-lmsp] [user ...] [user@host ...]

DESCRIPTION
   The finger displays information about the system users.

   Options are:

   -s   Finger displays the user's login name, real name, terminal name and
   write status (as a ``*'' after the terminal name if write permis-
   sion is denied), idle time, login time, office location and office
   phone number.

   Login time is displayed as month, day, hours and minutes, unless
   more than six months ago, in which case the year is displayed
   rather than the hours and minutes.

   Unknown devices as well as nonexistent idle and login times are
   displayed as single asterisks.

   -l   Produces a multi-line format displaying all of the information
   described for the -s option as well as the user's home directory,
   home phone number, login shell, mail status, and the contents of
   the files ``.plan'', ``.project'', ``.pgpkey'' and ``.forward''
   from the user's home directory.

   Phone numbers specified as eleven digits are printed as ``+N-NNN-
   NNN-NNNN''. Numbers specified as ten or seven digits are printed
   as the appropriate subset of that string. Numbers specified as
   five digits are printed as ``xN-NNNN''. Numbers specified as four
   digits are printed as ``xNNNN''.

   If write permission is denied to the device, the phrase ``(messages
   off)'' is appended to the line containing the device name. One
   entry per user is displayed with the -l option; if a user is logged
   on multiple times, terminal information is repeated once per login.

   Mail status is shown as ``No Mail.'' if there is no mail at all,
   ``Mail last read DDD MMM ## HH:MM YYYY (TZ)'' if the person has
   looked at their mailbox since new mail arriving, or ``New mail
   received ...'', `` Unread since ...'' if they have new mail.

   -p   Prevents the -l option of finger from displaying the contents of
   the ``.plan'', ``.project'' and ``.pgpkey'' files.

   -m   Prevent matching of user names. User is usually a login name; how-
   ever, matching will also be done on the users' real names, unless
   the -m option is supplied. All name matching performed by finger
   is case insensitive.

   If no options are specified, finger defaults to the -l style output if
   operands are provided, otherwise to the -s style. Note that some fields
   may be missing, in either format, if information is not available for
   them.

   If no arguments are specified, finger will print an entry for each user
   currently logged into the system.

   Finger may be used to look up users on a remote machine. The format is
   to specify a user as ``user@host'', or ``@host'', where the default out-
   put format for the former is the -l style, and the default output format
   for the latter is the -s style. The -l option is the only option that
   may be passed to a remote machine.

   If standard output is a socket, finger will emit a carriage return (^M)
   before every linefeed (^J). This is for processing remote finger requests
   when invoked by fingerd(8).

FILES
   ~/.nofinger   If finger finds this file in a user's home directory, it
     will, for finger requests originating outside the local
     host, firmly deny the existence of that user. For this
     to work, the finger program, as started by fingerd(8),
     must be able to see the .nofinger file. This generally
     means that the home directory containing the file must
     have the other-users-execute bit set (o+x). See
     chmod(1).  If you use this feature for privacy, please
     test it with ``finger @localhost'' before relying on it,
     just in case.

   ~/.plan

   ~/.project

   ~/.pgp    These files are printed as part of a long-format
     request. The .project file is limited to one line; the
     .plan file may be arbitrarily long.

SEE ALSO
  chfn(1),passwd(1),w(1),who(1)

HISTORY
   The finger command appeared in 3.0BSD.