NAME

whois − DARPA Internet user name directory service

SYNOPSIS

whois name

DESCRIPTION

whois help
Produces a helpful message similar to the following:

Please enter a name or a handle (ident), such as Smith or SRI-NIC.  Starting with a period forces a name-only search; starting with exclamation point forces handle-only. 

EXAMPLES

SmithFR[looks for name or handle SMITH ]
!SRI-NICFR[looks for handle SRI-NIC only ]
.Smith, JohnFR[looks for name JOHN SMITH only ]

Adding ‘...’ to the argument will match anything from that point, e.g.  ZU...  will match ZUL, ZUM, etc. 

To have the ENTIRE membership list of a group or organization, if you are asking about a group or org, shown with the record, use an asterisk character ∗ directly preceding the given argument.  [CAUTION: If there are a lot of members this will take a long time!] You may of course use exclamation point and asterisk, or a period and asterisk together. 

SEE ALSO

RFC 812:  Nicname/Whois

NEWS-OSRelease 4.2.1R