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To send mail, you need to know the login of the person who is going to receive your mail. In order to find this, you can use finger in the following way:
finger name
Replace name with the name of the person you want to send mail to. A name may be a first or last name, or an account name.
For example, suppose you want to send mail to Moe Howard. To find his login, you'd type the following:
finger howard
(You could also type "moe" instead of howard.) Finger would return something like the following:
`Login name: moeh In real life: Moe Howard'
In this case, Moe's login, and mail address, would be:
`moeh'
If this person didn't have an account on the machine you're using, finger would return:
`Login name: moeh In real life: ???'
Even though this person may not have a login on the machine you're using, they might still be available by email if they have a login on some other machine. You could find their login by typing:
finger name@hostname
For example, if you know that Moe Howard has a login on rigel, you can type:
finger howard@rigel
Say, this returned:
[rigel.cs.pdx.edu] Login name: moeh In real life: Moe Howard Directory: /home/rigel/mayo/moeh Shell: /bin/csh On since Sep 10 08:08:35 on ttypf from callisto.cs.pdx. No unread mail Project: No Plan.
Then Moe's complete mail address would be moeh@rigel.cs.pdx.edu.
Finger will only work on those directly connected Internet sites that have it configured. It will not work though mail gateways or through corporate firewalls. If you find that finger does not work, the best alternative is to use the phone and call the person you are trying to reach to get an email address. Some places like MIT and University of Illinios are setting up campus wide directory systems based on finger. But most place are not yet providing this type of directory service, in fact some have finger disabled.
Note: you may also attach domains to the machine name. Please read the following section (Berkeley Mail) for an explanation of domains.
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