NAME

whois − DARPA Internet user name directory service

SYNOPSIS

whois name

DESCRIPTION

To use whois, enter a name or a handle (“ident"), such as “Smith" or “SRI-NIC".  Starting with a period forces a name-only search; starting with exclamation point forces handle-only.  Examples:

 Smithlooks for name or handle SMITH
 !SRI-NIClooks for handle SRI-NIC only
 .Smith, Johnlooks for name JOHN SMITH only

Adding “..." to the argument will match anything from that point, e.g. “ZU..." will match ZUL, ZUM, etc.  Whois then looks for the name or handle you specified. 

To see the ENTIRE membership list of a group or organization, if you are asking about a group or org, shown with the record, use an asterisk character ‘∗’ directly preceding the given argument.  [CAUTION: If there are a lot of members this will take a long time!] You may of course use an exclamation point and an asterisk, or a period and an asterisk together. 

For a help message similar to the description above, type:

whois help

SEE ALSO

RFC 812:  Nicname/Whois

6 BSD  —  June 6, 1985