Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!husc6!ddl
From: ddl@husc6.harvard.edu (Dan Lanciani)
Newsgroups: comp.bugs.4bsd
Subject: Re: finger @@@@@@@@
Message-ID: <584@husc6.harvard.edu>
Date: 13 Nov 88 22:03:53 GMT
References: <7328@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <968@uhnix1.uh.edu>
Organization: Harvard University, Cambridge MA
Lines: 19

In article <968@uhnix1.uh.edu>, mkkam@menkae.cs.uh.edu (Francis Kam) writes:
| I tried:
| 	% finger @@@@@@@@@@@@@
| on a sun 3/50 running SunOS4.0 and got as many finger processes running
| as the number of '@' at the command line.
| 
| That might not be a bug, but quite undesirable to me.

	If you find it undesirable, then don't type it.  Sorry, I couldn't
resist...  In any case, this is not a bug but a combination of two features.
For a long time the target of a remote finger could itself be a remote
finger.  This is extremely useful for getting to systems on different
networks, e.g., finger @oz@xx.lcs.mit.edu when oz was a real chaos net
host.  In Sun OS 4.0, the null hostname appears to be treated as the
local host so you see the @@@@ effect.  In any case, please don't
fix the former feature...

					Dan Lanciani
					ddl@harvard.*