WRITE(1)
NAME
write − write to another user
USAGE
write node!user [ttyname]
write user@node [ttyname]
DESCRIPTION
The write command copies lines from your node to that of another user. When first called, it sends the following message:
Message from yournode!yourname [yourttyname] ...
The recipient of the message should write back at this point. Communication continues until an end-of-file (EOF) is read from the terminal, or an interrupt is sent. At that point, the write program writes "EOT" on the other terminal and exits.
To write to a user who is logged in more than once, use the ttyname argument to indicate the appropriate terminal name.
If write finds an exclamation point (!) at the beginning of a line, it calls the shell to execute the rest of the line as a command.
When you first write to a user, wait for a reply before sending another message. Each party should end each message with a distinctive signal, such as (o) for "over", or (oo) for "over and out" (when you want to terminate the conversation).
In order to accept incoming write messages, a node must be running the writed(8c) process, as well as the DOMAIN mbx_helper process. Before SR9.5, it was necessary to start an mbx_helper explicitly, but after SR9.5, writed automatically starts an mbx_helper.
FILES
/etc/utmp record of who is logged in on the node (link to ‘node_data/etc.utmp)
/bin/sh to execute "!"