rohan% finger  jsmith

The computer will then print the following to the screen:

Login name: jsmith                      In real life: John Smith
Directory: /home/sc/jsmith              Shell: /bin/csh
On since Oct 10 10:58:52 on pts/119     
New mail received Thu Oct 10 10:06:43 1996;
unread since Thu Oct 10 09:28:34 1996
No Plan.

This is particularly useful if you have forgotten someone's name, if you want to see if someone is logged on, or if you want to know if they have received the mail you just sent.

If you just type in:

rohan% finger  john

or

rohan% finger  smith

The computer will list all the johns or smiths in the system.

If you wish to finger someone on another system, the syntax is the same, except that you must also include the person's machine name such as:

rohan% finger  jsmith@sunspot.uco.edu

The computer will now go to the machine named "sunspot" at the domain name of "uco.edu" and look for the userid jsmith.