SYNOPSIS
use Net::Finger;
# You can put the response in a scalar...
$response = finger('[email protected]');
unless ($response) {
warn "Finger problem: $Net::Finger::error";
}
# ...or an array.
@lines = finger('[email protected]', 1);
DESCRIPTION
Net::Finger is a simple, straightforward implementation of a finger client in Perl --- so simple, in fact, that writing this documentation is almost unnecessary.This module has one automatically exported function, appropriately entitled "finger()". It takes two arguments:
- A username or email address to finger. (Yes, it does support the vaguely deprecated ``user@host@host'' syntax.) If you need to use a port other than the default finger port (79), you can specify it like so: ``username@hostname:port''.
- (Optional) A boolean value for verbosity. True == verbose output. If you don't give it a value, it defaults to false. Actually, whether this output will differ from the non-verbose version at all is up to the finger server.
"finger()" is context-sensitive. If it's used in a scalar context, it will return the server's response in one large string. If it's used in an array context, it will return the response as a list, line by line. If an error of some sort occurs, it returns undef and puts a string describing the error into the package global variable $Net::Finger::error. If you'd like to see some excessively verbose output describing every step "finger()" takes while talking to the other server, put a true value in the variable $Net::Finger::debug.
Here's a sample program that implements a very tiny, stripped-down finger(1):
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use Net::Finger;
use Getopt::Std;
use vars qw($opt_l);
getopts('l');
$x = finger($ARGV[0], $opt_l);
if ($x) {
print $x;
} else {
warn "$0: error: $Net::Finger::error\n";
}
BUGS
- Doesn't yet do non-blocking requests. (FITNR. Really.)
- Doesn't do local requests unless there's a finger server running on localhost.
- Contrary to the name's implications, this module involves no teledildonics.