NAME

       Net::Finger - a Perl implementation of a finger client.

SYNOPSIS

         use Net::Finger;

         # You can put the response in a scalar...
         $response = finger('corbeau@execpc.com');
         unless ($response) {
             warn "Finger problem: $Net::Finger::error";
         }

         # ...or an array.
         @lines = finger('corbeau@execpc.com', 1);

DESCRIPTION

       Net::Finger is a simple, straightforward implementation of a finger client in Perl -- so
       simple, in fact, that writing this documentation is almost unnecessary.

       This module has one automatically exported function, appropriately entitled "finger()". It
       takes two arguments:

       •   A username or email address to finger. (Yes, it does support the vaguely deprecated
           "user@host@host" syntax.) If you need to use a port other than the default finger port
           (79), you can specify it like so: "username@hostname:port".

       •   (Optional) A boolean value for verbosity. True == verbose output. If you don't give it
           a value, it defaults to false. Actually, whether this output will differ from the non-
           verbose version at all is up to the finger server.

       "finger()" is context-sensitive. If it's used in a scalar context, it will return the
       server's response in one large string. If it's used in an array context, it will return
       the response as a list, line by line. If an error of some sort occurs, it returns undef
       and puts a string describing the error into the package global variable
       $Net::Finger::error. If you'd like to see some excessively verbose output describing every
       step "finger()" takes while talking to the other server, put a true value in the variable
       $Net::Finger::debug.

       Here's a sample program that implements a very tiny, stripped-down finger(1):

           #!/usr/bin/perl -w

           use Net::Finger;
           use Getopt::Std;
           use vars qw($opt_l);

           getopts('l');
           $x = finger($ARGV[0], $opt_l);

           if ($x) {
               print $x;
           } else {
               warn "$0: error: $Net::Finger::error\n";
           }

BUGS

       •   Doesn't yet do non-blocking requests. (FITNR. Really.)

       •   Doesn't do local requests unless there's a finger server running on localhost.

       •   Contrary to the name's implications, this module involves no teledildonics.

AUTHOR

       Dennis Taylor, <corbeau@execpc.com>

SEE ALSO

       perl(1), finger(1), RFC 1288.