Description

finger@ uses tcpclient(1) to connect to TCP port 79 on host, sends user (followed by a newline), and prints any data that it receives. It uses addcr(1) to ensure that user is terminated by CR+LF. It uses delcr(1) and cat(1) to remove CR (\015) and convert unprintable characters to a visible format.

If host is not supplied, finger@ connects to the local host. If user is not supplied, finger@ sends a zero-length string (followed by a newline).

TCP port 79 is the well-known port for the Finger service. Some computers respond to connections on this port with information about user. If user is zero-length, some computers respond with information about all of the users who are logged in.

History

finger@ was originally part of Daniel J. Bernstein's ucspi-tcp toolset in 1999.

Author

Original code and documentation by Daniel J. Bernstein. Documentation modernizations by Jonathan de Boyne Pollard.