digit

A finger protocol client implementing RFC 1288 and RFC 742, written in Rust.

To try this on active finger servers (as of 2026), try the domains graph.no and tilde.town

Installation

cargo install digit-cli

Or from source:

cargo install --path .

Usage

digit [OPTIONS] [QUERY]
digit completions <SHELL>

Examples

# Query a user at a host
digit user@example.com

# List all users at a host
digit @example.com

# Query a user with verbose/long output
digit -l user@example.com

# Use a non-standard port
digit -p 7979 user@example.com

# Set a connection timeout (in seconds)
digit -t 5 user@example.com

# Write raw bytes to stdout (useful for piping)
digit --raw user@example.com | hexdump -C

# Limit response size to 64 KiB
digit --max-size 65536 user@example.com

# Query a user at localhost
digit user

# List users at localhost
digit

Forwarding queries

The finger protocol supports forwarding queries through a chain of hosts using the @host1@host2 syntax (RFC 1288, section 2.5.1). For example:

digit user@host1@host2

This connects to host2 and asks it to forward the query to host1. Note that many modern finger servers disable forwarding for security reasons, so this feature depends on server support.

Options

Option	Description
`-l, --long`	Request verbose/long output (sends `/W` prefix)
`-p, --port <PORT>`	Port to connect on (default: 79)
`-t, --timeout <SECS>`	Connection timeout in seconds (default: 10)
`--max-size <BYTES>`	Maximum response size in bytes (default: 1048576)
`--raw`	Write raw response bytes to stdout without UTF-8 decoding
`-h, --help`	Print help
`-V, --version`	Print version

Shell completions

Generate shell completions with the completions subcommand:

# Bash
digit completions bash > ~/.bash_completion.d/digit

# Zsh
digit completions zsh > ~/.zfunc/_digit

# Fish
digit completions fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/digit.fish

# PowerShell
digit completions powershell > digit.ps1

# Elvish
digit completions elvish > digit.elv

Library

digit can also be used as a Rust library. See the API documentation for details.

License

MIT

digit-cli 0.3.0