Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!jmsellens From: jmsellens@watdragon.waterloo.edu (John M. Sellens) Subject: Re: write replacements Message-ID: <1991May14.160620.28507@watdragon.waterloo.edu> Organization: Not the DCS Secret Police References: <1991Apr29.041455.2239@athena.mit.edu> <1991May5.130228.6320@santra.uucp> Date: Tue, 14 May 1991 16:06:20 GMT Lines: 135 In article <1991May5.130228.6320@santra.uucp> jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala) writes: |In article , kre@cs (Robert Elz) writes: |[ describes a zephyr-like / write-like system on which you can control | the appearance of the arriving message ] | |I did something like that when getting familiar with SunRPC. It's a |bit buggy, but the idea is basically the one you're after, I think. |Also, it appears that SunRPC is not very good for this so the program |should be rewritten to work on top of a tcp protocol (funny, when it |was just an exercise in SunRPC to start with ;-). | |Here's the README file; the package is in nic.funet.fi, |pub/unix/tcpip/rmsg.tar.Z. If anyone is willing to adopt it and make |it better, feel free. At Waterloo, we have a command called (predictably) "msg", which seems very similar to Jyrki's "rmsg", except that it uses ordinary TCP/IP, rather than RPC. Runs on Sun Sequent MIPS DEC etc. We like it much better than write and talk, and have been using it for years, all over campus. Available via anonymous ftp from watmath.waterloo.edu in ~/pub/msg.shar and here's a copy of the man page for thoe of you who mght be interested. John MSG(1) User Commands MSG(1) NAME msg - write a short message to other users SYNOPSIS msg [ -l ] [ -m message ] [ -p ] [ -r ] user ... DESCRIPTION Msg writes a one-line message to a given set of users. If a user is logged in more than once, each instance of that user will receive the message. Previous versions of msg allowed the last argument to be the message. This confusing behaviour is no longer available. The message is preceded by a beep, the login name of the sender, and the name of the sender's machine. If the sender is set-userid to someone other than the super-user, then the real (set-userid) name is printed in parentheses. Replies should use the login name, not the parenthesized (set- userid) name, since the login name is the way msg finds peo- ple. Msg works across machines, as long as the remote machine is running the msgd(8) message daemon. To do this, user should be of the form person@machine (or the old-style machine!person ). It is very annoying to receive a message just before your screen clears, making it impossible to read the message. To help alleviate this problem, msg will save a copy of the message and you can use the -l option to repeat the last message you received. OPTIONS -r If the -r, option is given, msg will look in the file /usr/tmp/msg.userid file to find out the last person who sent you a message, and assume you want to reply to them. (Additional recipients can still be speci- fied, so the same rules apply about which arguments are messages and which are users. The easiest thing to use is msg -r with no other arguments; type the reply on the next line.) -l List the last message received. This simply shows the file /usr/tmp/msg.userid so that you don't have to remember the name. msg -lr is a handy way to show the last message and prompt for a reply. -p Use the text of the previous message you sent (saved in the file /usr/tmp/pmsg.userid) as the text of this message. This is handy if you mistyped someone's userid, and typed a long message only to have it Formatted 91/03/08 University of Waterloo 1 MSG(1) User Commands MSG(1) fail. Msg obeys the restrictions of mesg(1). SEE ALSO write(1), mail(1), talk(1), msgd(8) EXAMPLES % msg -m 'This is the message in quotes.' user1 user2 Quoting a string makes it one argument as far as Unix is concerned. % msg user1 user2 % msg -r % msg -r -m 'Or you can put the reply here.' FILES /usr/tmp/msg.userid Contains the last message received. /usr/tmp/pmsg.userid Contains the text of the previous message sent or attempted. /usr/tmp/mesg.userid Answerback message - set by mesg(1). AUTHOR The staff of the Math Faculty Computing Facility at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario Canada. Bug reports can be sent to either or both of John Sellens (jmsellens@watmath.waterloo.edu) or uw.mfcf.bugs@watmath.waterloo.edu. COPYRIGHT Copyright 1988, 1989, 1990 University of Waterloo Redistribution is permitted. Formatted 91/03/08 University of Waterloo 2