4D Doc Center : NET

Home

4D Internet Commands v14

NET_Finger


NET_Finger ( hostName ; searchText ; results ) -> Function result

Parameter	Type	Description
hostName	String	Host name or IP address
searchText	String	Search text
results	Text	Finger results
Function result	Integer	Error Code

Description

Given an IP address of a machine to search and the text of a user account name on the machine, the NET_Finger command will return the finger results into results. The unix finger command is designed to return information about the last login time of a user as well as any additional information the user chooses to provide within his/her ".plan" and ".project" files.

Two different routes may be specified for the Finger search. A finger search may be attempted directly at the user's machine. For instance, to get information about "johnt" at "4d.com", you could perform the search as:

$error:=NET_Finger("www.4d.com";"johnt";$fingertext)

The same finger search could also be performed indirectly. An indirect search would ask a remote server which supports the finger command to perform your query. For instance, the following will ask the machine identified by the domain name "4d.com" to perform a remote finger query of the user "johnt@4d.com".

$error:=NET_Finger("www.4d.com";"johnt@4d.com";$fingertext)

While the main information returned in each case should be the same, there are likely to be some subtle differences in the returned text. Different machines may have different options configured when they execute the finger command and the results could vary slightly. Also, there is likely to be some formatting difference between the results of a direct and indirect finger command, with indirect searches often containing additional linefeeds.

hostName is the host name or IP address of the machine in which the user identified by searchText has an account.

searchText is either the text to search for on the given finger server, or a machine name or IP address. If searchText is a user name, the command will search through the directory of user names on that server for searchText. If searchText is a machine name or IP address, the command will send a finger request through the finger server in hostName to the machine specified.

results is the text returned which contains the results of the search.