Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr!tektronix!tekcrl!trost
From: trost@crl.labs.tek.com (Bill Trost)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs
Subject: finger.el
Message-ID: <4341@tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM>
Date: 19 Jul 89 22:13:19 GMT
Sender: ftp@tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM
Lines: 41

I posted this locally to tek without any reaction locally, so I guess
that means I can foist it off on the rest of the world....

Here's a little function that uses the TCP stuff to talk to finger
daemons.  Lots more pleasant than running who in a subshell or
users.el or any of those other hacks.  It was mostly inspired by the
fact that finger doesn't work on Tektronix boxes....

Enjoy!

(defun finger (who)
  "Display information about users."
  (interactive "sFinger: ")
  (cond
   ((null who) (setq who "@localhost"))
   ((not (string-match "@" who))
    (setq who (concat who "@localhost"))))
  (with-output-to-temp-buffer "*finger*"
      (let ((stream (open-network-stream
		     "finger" "*finger*"
		     (substring who (1+ (string-match "@" who)))
		     "finger")))
	(set-process-filter stream 'finger-process-filter)
	(set-process-sentinel stream 'ignore)
	(process-send-string stream
			     (concat (substring who 0
						(string-match "@" who))
				     "\n")))))

(defun finger-process-filter (process s)
  (save-excursion
    (set-buffer (process-buffer process))
    (while (< 0 (length s))
      (let ((l (string-match "\r" s)))
	(insert (substring s 0 l))
	(setq s (cond (l (substring s (1+ l)))
		      (t "")))))))

Bill Trost, Computer Research Labs, Tektronix
trost@crl.labs.tek.com / tektronix!crl.labs!trost
(trost@reed.bitnet, but probably tektronix!reed!trost)