*BSD News Article 12625


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From: subbarao@fc.hp.com (Kartik Subbarao)
Subject: Re: How does finger get info about mail???
Message-ID: <1993Mar14.002504.2529@Princeton.EDU>
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References: <1993Mar14.000449.24954@llyene.jpl.nasa.gov>
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1993 00:25:04 GMT
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In article <1993Mar14.000449.24954@llyene.jpl.nasa.gov> robert@triton.Jpl.Nasa.Gov writes:
>BACKGROUND:
>	SunOS 4.1.2. SPARC 2.
>all,
>	When I do a "finger username" I get some nice goodies about 
>username.  One thing I'm baffled about is the mail information it
>displays.  How does it do this??  The manual pages say the following:
[..]
>What process does finger go through to get the mail information??  Does
>it look at the access time of /var/spool/mail/username or is it getting
>it from somewhere else??

I don't get this. You say that you're "baffled" about the mail information
that finger displays, then cooly go on to suggest that it looks at the access 
time.

No, what finger really does is links up to the nearest GPS satellite
around, then finds the person whom you're fingering, opens an AI interface
to their mind and finds out when the last time they read mail. :-)

	-Kartik