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PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of this interface
may differ (consult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface
may not be implemented on Linux.
NAME
write — write to another user
SYNOPSIS
write user_name [terminal]
DESCRIPTION
The write utility shall read lines from the standard input and write them to the terminal of the
specified user. When first invoked, it shall write the message:
Message from sender-login-id (sending-terminal) [date]...
to user_name. When it has successfully completed the connection, the sender's terminal shall be alerted
twice to indicate that what the sender is typing is being written to the recipient's terminal.
If the recipient wants to reply, this can be accomplished by typing:
write sender-login-id [sending-terminal]
upon receipt of the initial message. Whenever a line of input as delimited by an NL, EOF, or EOL special
character (see the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 11, General Terminal Interface) is
accumulated while in canonical input mode, the accumulated data shall be written on the other user's
terminal. Characters shall be processed as follows:
* Typing <alert> shall write the <alert> character to the recipient's terminal.
* Typing the erase and kill characters shall affect the sender's terminal in the manner described by
the termios interface in the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 11, General Terminal
Interface.
* Typing the interrupt or end-of-file characters shall cause write to write an appropriate message
("EOT\n" in the POSIX locale) to the recipient's terminal and exit.
* Typing characters from LC_CTYPE classifications print or space shall cause those characters to be
sent to the recipient's terminal.
* When and only when the stty iexten local mode is enabled, the existence and processing of additional
special control characters and multi-byte or single-byte functions is implementation-defined.
* Typing other non-printable characters shall cause implementation-defined sequences of printable
characters to be written to the recipient's terminal.
To write to a user who is logged in more than once, the terminal argument can be used to indicate which
terminal to write to; otherwise, the recipient's terminal is selected in an implementation-defined manner
and an informational message is written to the sender's standard output, indicating which terminal was
chosen.
Permission to be a recipient of a write message can be denied or granted by use of the mesg utility.
However, a user's privilege may further constrain the domain of accessibility of other users' terminals.
The write utility shall fail when the user lacks appropriate privileges to perform the requested action.
OPTIONS
None.
OPERANDS
The following operands shall be supported:
user_name Login name of the person to whom the message shall be written. The application shall ensure
that this operand is of the form returned by the who utility.
terminal Terminal identification in the same format provided by the who utility.
STDIN
Lines to be copied to the recipient's terminal are read from standard input.
INPUT FILES
None.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of write:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. (See the
Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for the
precedence of internationalization variables used to determine the values of locale
categories.)
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalization
variables.
LC_CTYPE Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters
(for example, single-byte as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments and input files). If
the recipient's locale does not use an LC_CTYPE equivalent to the sender's, the results are
undefined.
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic
messages written to standard error and informative messages written to standard output.
NLSPATH Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.
ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
If an interrupt signal is received, write shall write an appropriate message on the recipient's terminal
and exit with a status of zero. It shall take the standard action for all other signals.
STDOUT
An informational message shall be written to standard output if a recipient is logged in more than once.
STDERR
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
OUTPUT FILES
The recipient's terminal is used for output.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
None.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 The addressed user is not logged on or the addressed user denies permission.
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
Default.
The following sections are informative.
APPLICATION USAGE
The talk utility is considered by some users to be a more usable utility on full-screen terminals.
EXAMPLES
None.
RATIONALE
The write utility was included in this volume of POSIX.1‐2008 since it can be implemented on all terminal
types. The standard developers considered the talk utility, which cannot be implemented on certain
terminals, to be a ``better'' communications interface. Both of these programs are in widespread use on
historical implementations. Therefore, the standard developers decided that both utilities should be
specified.
The format of the terminal name is unspecified, but the descriptions of ps, talk, who, and write require
that they all use or accept the same format.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
mesg, talk, who
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 8, Environment Variables, Chapter 11, General
Terminal Interface
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition,
Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc
and The Open Group. (This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) In the event
of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original
IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at
http://www.unix.org/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have been introduced
during the conversion of the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .