w (Unix)

w
Operating system	Unix and Unix-like
Type	Command

The command w on many Unix-like operating systems provides a quick summary of every user logged into a computer,^[1] what each user is currently doing, and what load all the activity is imposing on the computer itself. The command is a one-command combination of several other Unix programs: who, uptime, and ps -a.

Example[]

Sample output (which may vary between systems):

$ w
 11:12am up 608 day(s), 19:56,  6 users,  load average: 0.36, 0.36, 0.37
User     tty       login@  idle  what
smithj   pts/5      8:52am       w
jonesm   pts/23    20Apr06    28 -bash
harry    pts/18     9:01am     9 pine
peterb   pts/19    21Apr06       emacs -nw html/index.html
janetmcq pts/8     10:12am 3days -csh
singh    pts/12    16Apr06  5:29 /usr/bin/perl -w perl/test/program.pl

References[]

^ David Martínez Perales (23 March 2009). Learning UNIX with examples. ISBN 9781409253792.

External links[]

w(1) – OpenBSD General Commands Manual
w(1) – FreeBSD General Commands Manual

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[1] David Martínez Perales (23 March 2009). Learning UNIX with examples. ISBN 9781409253792.

[1]

v t Unix command-line interface programs and shell builtins
File system	cat chmod chown chgrp cksum cmp cp dd du df file fuser ln ls mkdir mv pax pwd rm rmdir split tee touch type umask
Processes	at bg crontab fg kill nice ps time
User environment	env exit logname mesg talk tput uname who write
Text processing	awk basename comm csplit cut diff dirname ed ex fold head iconv join m4 more nl paste patch printf sed sort strings tail tr uniq vi wc xargs
Shell builtins	alias cd echo test unset wait
Searching	find grep
Documentation	man
Software development	ar ctags lex make nm strip yacc
Miscellaneous	bc cal expr lp od sleep true and false
Categories Standard Unix programs Unix SUS2008 utilities List