Server Commands/WHO

Revision as of 01:19, 10 December 2008

Syntax: WHO <mask1> [<options> [<mask2>]]

WHO is a powerful tool for searching for users.

<mask2> is optional, if mask2 is present it's used for matching and mask1 is ignored, otherwise mask1 is used for matching, since mask2 is the last parameter it *can* contain a space and this can help when trying to match a "realname".

When matching IP numbers the <mask> can be in 3 forms:

• The old and well known IRC masks using * and ? as wanted
• The IPmask form a.b.c.d/e.f.g.h as used in most firewalls and system configurations, where what is before the / are the bits we expect in the IP number and what is after the / is the "filter mask" telling which bits whould be considered and wich should be ignored.
• The IPmask form a.b.c.d/bitcount where bitcount is an integer between 0 and 31 (inclusive), the matching will be for the IPs whose first "bitcount" bits are equal to those in a.b.c.d

The "options2" part can be as follows:

  [<flags>][%[<fields>[,<querytype>]]]
 
 in which:
 
  <flags>: can be a sequence of field matching flags, use mode matching flags
           and special purpose flags
 
    Field matching flags, when one of these is specified the field in
    question is matched against the mask, otherwise it's not matched.
 
    n   Nick (in nick!user@host)
    u   Username (in nick!user@host)
    h   Hostname (in nick!user@host)
    i   Numeric IP (the unresolved host)
    s   Servername (the canonic name of the server the guy is on)
    r   Info text (formerly "Realname")
    a   Account name
 
    If no field-matching flags are specified they default to: nuhsr

User mode matching flags (specifying one of these means that only clients with that umode are considered, what is not specified is always matched):

    o   Irc operator
        [In the future more flags will be supported, basically all
         usermodes plus the +/- specificators to revert the filtering]
 
    Special purpose flags:

    x   If this is specified the extended visibility of information for opers
        is applied, what this means depends on the fact that you are local or
        global operator and on how the admin configured the server (global
        and eventually local irc opers might be allowed with this flag to see
        +i local users, to see all +i users, to see users into +p and/or +s
        channels, and so on). Using the 'x' flag while not being an irc
        operator is meaningless (it will be ignored), using it while oper'd
        means that the query is almost certainly logged and the admin might
        (rightfully) ask you an explanation on why you did.
 
    The rest, what follows the %, that is [%[fields[,<querytype>]]], is as it
    has always been since the first who.patch, the <fields> part specifies
    wich fields to include in the output as:
 
    c : Include (first) channel name
    d : Include "distance" in hops (hopcount)
    f : Include flags (all of them)
    h : Include hostname
    i : Include IP
    l : Include idle time (0 for remote users) [2.10.11+]
    n : Include nick
    r : Include real name
    s : Include server name
    t : Include the querytype in the reply
    u : Include userID with eventual ~
    a : Include account name

And the ,<querytype> final option can be used to specify what you want the server to say in the querytype field of the output, useful to filter the 81 output in scripts that do a kind of "on 354 ..."

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