Finger

Finger is a network protocol used to provide information about users logged in on a host. It was first invented by Les Earnest as a tool to see the physical location of users and free terminals at the Stanford AI Lab. In collaboration with other sites, it was extended by servers to provide the information between ARPANET hosts. The first implementations where for PDP-10 computers, but Unix and others soon followed.

Many implementations allow for users to have a plan file which would be provided to network clients on request. The file was originally meant to contain current and future plans for a user, but the free-format content would often expand to random musings. The plan file was named differently across various operating system; arguably the most well known file name is the one for Unix: .plan.

External links

• RFC 742: NAME/FINGER, the first ARPANET version from 1977.
• RFC 1288: The Finger User Information Protocol, the latest TCP/IP version from 1991.