NAME

       nwrite - enhanced write

SYNOPSIS

       nwrite [-i minutes] [-a] user[.ttyname] [user[.ttyname] ...]

DESCRIPTION

       nwrite  copies  lines  from  your  terminal  to  the terminals of one or more users.  When
       called, it begins copying lines you type to the recipient's terminal(tty). Before  sending
       the first line of text, nwrite prepends the message

         Message from <name> on <tty> [to user [users ...]] at <time> ...

       Communication  continues until an end of file is read from the terminal or an interrupt is
       sent.  At that point nwrite writes `EOF' (or `EOF (sendername)' if whoeof is set)  on  the
       other terminal and exits.

       If  you  want to write to a user who is logged in more than once, the ttyname argument may
       be used to indicate the appropriate terminal name, OR, you can let nwrite find  the  first
       writable  tty,  and  write  to  that. Additionally, you can use the -i option to specify a
       number of minutes; ttys more idle than the number you specify will be ignored when looking
       for ttys to write to.

       Permission  to  write  may be denied or granted by use of the mesg command.  At the outset
       writing is allowed.  Certain commands, in particular nroff and pr(1) disallow messages  in
       order to prevent messy output.

NWRITERC

       To control how incoming nwrites look to you, create a ~/.nwriterc with lines of the form:

         option  value

       Where value is either 0 or 1 (meaning no and yes) and option is one of:

       headers
              Display "user> " before each incoming line.

       beep   Cause the terminal to beep when the message header comes through.

       nodelay
              Do not wait for the first line of input before displaying the message header.

       bold   Takes the following string values:

              never  no bolding (default)

              header message header only

              tag    message header and "login>" line tags

              all    bold everything

       showtarg
              Used  to  control  the  behavior  of the message header. Takes the following string
              values:

              never  never show recipient list

              multi  only if more than one recipient (default)

              always always show recipients

       whoeof When sending EOF, append username to differentiate between many Users at once  like
              this: "EOF (user)".

       Note  that  your  home directory must be world executable and the .nwriterc itself must be
       world readable.

EXAMPLE NWRITERC

        headers        1
        nodelay        0
        beep           0
        bold           header
        showtarg       multi

OPTIONS

       -a     arguments are zeroed so that the process table entry does not reveal  who  you  are
              writing to.  (Not available on all systems.)

       -i <minutes>
              Ignore ttys more idle than <minutes> minutes.

FILES

       /var/run/utmp
              to find user

       /etc/nwrite.rc
              to set system default preferences

       ~user/.nwriterc
              to obtain target's preferences

AUTHORS

        Marco Nicosia,    marco@csua.berkeley.edu, Summer 1993
        Aaron C. Smith,   aaron@csua.berkeley.edu, Summer 1994-Spring 1995
        Alan Coopersmith, alanc@csua.berkeley.edu, Summer 1995-present
        Master ftp site: ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/nwrite/

SEE ALSO

       mesg(1) , who(1) ,