HINT
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NAME
hint - send a one-line message to other users
SYNOPSIS
hint [ -fp ] [ -d sec ]
user|tty[,user|tty...] [ message ]
hint -y [ -bs ] [ -T termtype ]
hint -n
hint -V
hint
DESCRIPTION
hint
sends a one-line message to one or more other users. The message
appears along with the sender's user name and a beep (or, if possible,
a ``visual bell'' such as flashing the screen) on the status line of
the recipient's terminal, and disappears after 10 seconds. If the
recipient's terminal does not have a status line, hints appear wherever
the cursor happens to be when they are received.
If
hint
is run with no arguments, it displays the user's current hint status,
which is either
y
or
n,
meaning the user is allowing or refusing hints, respectively. The hint
status is independent of the
mesg(1)
status.
If one or more user names (e.g., dave)
or terminal names (e.g., tty10)
are given (separated by commas but no spaces), any
arguments after them are taken to be the message to send. If
the message is not given on the command line,
hint
prompts for the message from the keyboard.
hint
sends the message to all terminals where each given user
is logged on and all terminals given directly.
hint
skips users who are not logged in and hint
y
and terminals that are not hint
y,
and sends the message to whatever users and terminals remain.
OPTIONS
The following options are used when setting the hint status:
- -y
-
Allow receipt of hints; no hint is sent. This option saves the codes
for accessing your terminal's status line, as read from the
termcap(5)
or
terminfo(4)
database (whichever is available),
into an entry in the file /usr/local/lib/hinttab.
- -b
-
Force hints that you receive to beep even if a ``visual bell'' is available.
Has no effect if the
-y
option is not also given.
- -s
-
Force hints that you receive to be silent; a ``visual bell'' will be used
if available. If both
-b
and
-s
are given, neither a beep nor a ``visual bell'' will be used.
Has no effect if the
-y
option is not also given.
- -T termtype
-
Use
termtype
as the terminal type.
Has no effect if the
-y
option is not also given.
- -n
-
Refuse receipt of hints; no hint is sent.
The following options are used when sending a hint:
- -f
-
Make the hint last forever (until overwritten or cleared). This option
overrides any
-d
option given.
- -p
-
Make the sender's name appear preceding the hint, enclosed in parentheses,
rather than after the hint, following a dash.
- -d sec
-
Change the hint duration from 10 seconds to
sec
seconds.
sec
is not allowed to be less than 5 or greater than 60.
Additional options:
- -V
-
Display the version number of the
hint
program; no other action is taken.
ENVIRONMENT
All options except
-y,
-n,
and
-V
can be given defaults by setting the
HINT
environment variable.
For example, to change the default duration
of hints that you send from 10 seconds to 15 seconds, and always
receive silent hints, you could use:
-
For the C shell:
setenv HINT "-d15 -s"
For the Bourne and Korn shells:
HINT="-d15 -s"; export HINT
FILES
/usr/local/lib/hinttab
SEE ALSO
clearhint(1L),
hall(1L),
mesg(1),
write(1),
terminfo(4),
termcap(5)
BUGS
If a hint is sent to several terminals which have different length
status lines, the message will be truncated on all of the terminals to
the length of the shortest status line, so that everyone gets the same hint.
There is no network support.
AUTHOR
David MacKenzie
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- OPTIONS
-
- ENVIRONMENT
-
- FILES
-
- SEE ALSO
-
- BUGS
-
- AUTHOR
-
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Time: 06:58:59 GMT, December 12, 2024