Finger - A Handy Internet Tool

by Tom Hughes

Finger is an internet tool which can give you information about Net users.

To install Finger on your system, click on the icon in the RISC User master menu system, and drag the file named Finger to your Library directory (this will normally be a directory called 'Library' in the root directory of your work disc - or on the Risc PC it is located within !Boot).
To use Finger simply go to the command line (by pressing F12 or bring up a task window) and type Finger followed by a nodename and an address. For example if you type:

   finger fred@bloggs.demon.co.uk

then if the site bloggs is on line, and has a user called fred, you will get back whatever information about Fred that he wishes to make public. If you want other people to obtain information about you if they finger you, you need to provide a text file with the same name as your user name, placed inside the directory !TCPIPUser.Finger.
You can also find out if there is any post waiting for you in the system by fingering the post server, e.g.:

   finger bloggs@post.demon.co.uk

It's quite useful to do this automatically when you log on, since if someone is sending you a file by email, it can take a long time to arrive if the file is large. You can set a line in the TCP/IP AutoExec file to do this:

   finger {node}@post.demon.co.uk

Unless you finger the post, there's no indication that any mail is in the pipeline, so you may log off again blissfully unaware that there is 800K of your friend's code sloshing around in the system waiting for you to stay on line long enough to download it.

For more ways to use finger, see RISC User Magazine Volume 8 Issue 8 page 51.


 Copyright RISC User, 1995