NAME
    write - send a message to another user

SYNOPSIS
    write user [ttyname]

DESCRIPTION
    Write allows you to communicate with other users, by copying lines from
    your terminal to theirs.

    When you run the write command, the user you are writing to gets a mes-
    sage of the form:

    Message from yourname@yourhost on yourtty at hh:mm ...

    Any further lines you enter will be copied to the specified user's ter-
    minal. If the other user wants to reply, they must run write as  well.

    When you are done, type an end-of-file or interrupt character. The
    other user will see the message EOF indicating that the conversation is
    over.

    You can prevent people (other than the super-user) from writing to you
    with the mesg(1) command. Some commands, for example  nroff(1) and
    pr(1), may disallow writing automatically, so that your output isn't
    overwritten.

    If the user you want to write to is logged in on more than one termi-
    nal, you can specify which terminal to write to by specifying the ter-
    minal name as the second operand to the write command. Alternatively,
    you can  let write select one of the terminals - it will pick the one
    with the shortest idle time. This is so that if the user is logged in
    at work and also dialed up from home, the message will go to the right
    place.

    The traditional protocol for writing to someone  is that the string
    `-o', either at the end of a line or on a line by itself, means that
    it's the other person's turn to talk. The string `oo' means that the
    person believes the conversation to be over.

SEE ALSO
   mesg(1),talk(1),who(1)

HISTORY
    A write command appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.