tcpcmd.finger

The Finger Client Verb

Finger is a very simple protocol. It has one command. You pass a person's email address (or other identifier) to a Finger server, and some information about that person is returned.

If you run the verb tcpcmd.finger ("well.com", "daveW@well.com"), this information is returned:

The following includes information on only those WELL users who have specifically chosen to make information about themselves publicly available. For help contact .

[well.com] finger: daveW: no such user. The following includes information on only those WELL users who have specifically chosen to make information about themselves publicly available. For help contact .

[That looks like it could have come from the Department of Redundancy Department!]

It happens in this case, that Dave hasn't registered any information for this service to publish. That's OK.

Try it on a finger server you use.

The syntax of tcpcmd.finger is:

tcpcmd.finger (host, emailaddress [,timeout])

where

• host
  

  is a string containing the IP address or domain name of the finger host you want to query.

  "well.com"

• emailaddress
  

  is a string containing the email address or other identifier to use for the finger query.

  "daveW@well.com"

• timeout
  a number containing the number of seconds finger will wait at each step in the sending and receiving process before it gives up and returns to the caller. The default timeout is 60 seconds.

Returns

• a string containing the response from the host
• a script error if there is an error contacting the host or any other communications error.

Restrictions

None that are known.

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