NAME

send, reply, shout − Send a message to another user’s terminal. 

SYNOPSIS

send userlist message
 
reply message
 
shout message

DESCRIPTION

You can write a message to one or more users’ terminal(s) using send.  The users you wish to send a message to must be logged in and allowing sends to be received on their terminals.  If a user is busy, isn’t logged in, or is not receiving sends consider sending them Electronic Mail. 
 
You can use finger or who to find out if a user is not currently logged in. 
 
The syntax for sending a message to a user is:
 

send username message

 
Where username is the user you wish to send the message to, and message is the message you want to send.  Thus:
 

send jsmith Hi Joe! 

 
Will write the message “Hi Joe!” to user jsmith’s terminal.  The message is written with a header that tells jsmith who sent the message and when it was sent.  The example above could show up on jsmith’s terminal as:
 

[Message from ag (console) Tue Sep 13 17:50:42 1988]
Hi Joe!

 
If you have a list of users to send one message to, specify each username on the send command line separated by commas.  This will tell send when the usernames stop and the message starts.  Thus:
 

send ford, ag, rms Meeting in 5 mins--room 222. 

 
Will send the message, “There will be a meeting in 5 mins. in room 222.”, to the users “ford”, “ag”, and “rms”.
 
Note: I did not put a comma after rms’s username because it is the last username on the list.  If I had, send would have tried to write the message, “will be a meeting in 5 mins. in room 222.” to the users “ford”, “ag”, “rms”, and “There”. 
 
You are not limited to the number of users you may send a message to, but remember that each username specified in the list, except for the last one, must end with a comma.
 
Also, remember that each username must be a separate argument on the send command line, so white space is needed between usernames.  The following are not valid user lists:
 

ag, ford, rms
send would try to write the message to the user ag, ford, and rms.  Remember each username must be a separate argument on the command line. 

ag , ford , rms
send would try to write the message, “, ford , rms” to user ag, which would not produce and error, but is probably not what the user had in mind. 

ag ford rms
send would try to write the message, “ford rms” to user ag.  Again, this would not produce an error, but is probably not what the user had in mind. 
 
If the message is more than one line, don’t start it on the send command line.  Run send
 with only the user name(s) as arguments and start the message on the following line.  What is really happening here is that send
 reads the message from its standard input stream if no message is specified on the command line.  You indicate the end of the message with Ctrl-d, the “end of file” character.
 
Even a one-line message is easier to type on a line of its own if it contains characters that would confuse the shell, including “;”, “?”, “∗”, single or double quotation marks, parentheses, braces or square brackets.
 

send rms
Ford and I are going to Robertos’ for some rolled tacos
and video games.  Want to join us?
Ctrl-d
fi

 Will send a lunch invitation to user
rms.
 If a hyphen is the last argument on the
send
command line, then
send will read the message from the standard input device.  If part of
the message was supplied on the command line (before the hyphen) then
send
will concatenate the two messages before it sends them. Thus
a reply to the previous send might look like this:
 

send ag I had some pizza at Bruno’s, but I’m up for a -
three-player game of Rampage.

Ctrl-d

 
To reply to a message that was sent to you via send , you would usually use reply. The example above was given only to demonstrate the use of the hyphen for continuing message input. 
 
To send a message to a user on another machine that is connected directly to your machine, simply specify the user’s name followed by an @ and their machine name; e.g.:
 

send ag@@hobbes Good Day. 

 
Will send the message “Good Day.” to the user “ag” on the machine “hobbes”.  The message will be displayed on ag’s terminal with your name and the machine you are on so reply can be used to send messages back to you. 

SHOUT

To send a message to all users on the system, use ,B shout.  shout is exactly like send except it does not accept user names to send to.  Instead, shout will send the message supplied to all the users that are currently logged in. 
 
As a message is sent to a user, it is also appended to a file in /tmp. The message is written in the unix mail box format so it can be retrieved using mail. 
 
To display messages that are in your sends file use prsends. 
 
If a message could not be sent to a recipient, send will append the message to the file dead.send in your home directory.  The message will be written in the unix mail box format so you can use mail to edit and forward the message. 

REPLY

reply is used to send a message to the last user that sent you a message.  reply is exactly like send except it does not accept a user list.  Instead, reply will send the message supplied to the last user that sent you a message. 
 

reply My name is Joe Blow and I’d rather not have a password. 

As a message is sent to user, it is also written to a save file in /tmp/sends.  This file is typically cleared on logout.  The .sends file may be 622, but this will inhibit. 

FILES

/tmp/sends/USERNAMEPrevious sends

SEE ALSO

finger(1), who(1), prsends(1), mail(1)

AUTHOR

Keith M. Gabryelski (ag@amix.commodore.com)

Amiga Unix  —  Last change: