z/OS V1R9.0 UNIX System Services Command ... - Christian Grothoff

write
Usage notes
Localization
Exit Values
1. When you issue a write command to send a message to another user, the
other user receives a message of the form:
Message from your_name (terminal) [date] ...
After the system establishes the connection to the other user, it sends two alert
characters (usually beeps) to your terminal to tell you that it is ready to send
your message. You can then type your message, which will appear on the other
user’s terminal. To end your message, enter end-of-file or an interrupt (typically,
for end-of-file or for an interrupt, where EscChar is
normally the cent sign; if you use rlogin or telnet to enter the shell, you hold
down the Ctrl key while you press either D or C). When write receives an
indication for end-of-message, it tells the other user that the message is over
and breaks the connection.
The other user can reply to your message with:
write your_user_name
However, if both of you are trying to write on each other’s terminal at the same
time, the messages may get interleaved on your screens, making them difficult
to read. For two-way conversations, use talk instead of write.
2. You can add the output of a command to the material that you write. To do this,
start a line with an exclamation mark (!) and put a standard system command
on the rest of that line. write calls your shell to execute the command, and
sends the standard output (stdout) from the command to the other user. The
other user does not see the command itself or any input to the command. For
example, you might write:
Here is what my file contains:
!cat file
3. The mesg command lets you refuse write messages. With:
mesg n
you can tell the system that you don’t want to be interrupted by write
messages. If people try to write to you, they are denied immediately; the
system does not inform you about such attempts. For further details, see mesg.
write uses the following localization environment variables:
v LANG
v LC_ALL
v LC_CTYPE
v LC_MESSAGES
v LC_SYNTAX
v NLSPATH
See Appendix F for more information.
0 write successfully wrote a message, or the intended recipient used mesg
to refuse messages (either before you start sending a message or as you
are sending the message).
1 Failure due to any of the following:
v user_name is not signed on
v You do not have permission to write on that user’s terminal
v write cannot open the target terminal for writing
794 z/OS V1R9.0 UNIX System Services Command Reference