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:

Smith[looks for name or handle SMITH]
!SRI-NIC[looks for handle SRI-NIC only]
.Smith, John[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

4.3 Berkeley Distribution  —  June 6, 1985