whoami

In computing, whoami is a command found on most Unix-like operating systems and every Windows operating system since Windows Server 2003. It is a concatenation of the words "Who am I?" and prints the effective username of the current user when invoked. It has the same effect as the Unix command id -un.

On Unix-like operating systems, the output of the command is slightly different from $USER because whoami outputs the username that the user is working under, whereas $USER outputs the username that was used to log in. For example, if the user logged in as John and su into root, whoami displays root and echo $USER displays John. This is because the su command does not invoke a login shell by default.

The earliest versions were created in 2.9 BSD as a convenience form for who am i, the Berkeley Unix who command's way of printing just the logged in user's identity.^[1] The GNU version was written by Richard Mlynarik and is part of the GNU Core Utilities (coreutils).

The command is also available as part of the Windows 2000 Resource Kit^[2] and Windows XP SP2 Support Tools.^[3]

This command was also available as a NetWare-Command residing in the public-directory of the fileserver. It also outputs the current connections to which server the workstation is attached with which username.

Example

Unix:

# whoami
root

DOS:

C:\Users\admin>whoami
workgroup\admin

References

External links

whoami(1) – 4.2BSD General Commands Manual
whoami(1) – FreeBSD General Commands Manual
Microsoft TechNet Whoami article

Unix command-line interface programs and shell builtins

File system	cat chmod chown chgrp cksum cmp cp dd du df file fsck fuser ln ls mkdir mount mv pax pwd rm rmdir split tee touch type umask

Processes	at bg chroot cron fg kill killall nice pgrep pkill ps pstree time top

User environment	clear env exit finger history logname mesg passwd su sudo uptime talk tput uname w wall who whoami write

Text processing	awk banner basename comm csplit cut diff dirname ed ex fmt fold head iconv join less more nl paste printf sed sort spell strings tail tr uniq vi wc xargs yes

Shell builtins	alias cd echo test unset wait

Networking	dig host ifconfig inetd netcat netstat nslookup ping rdate rlogin route ssh traceroute

Searching	find grep locate whatis whereis

Documentation	apropos help man

Miscellaneous	bc dc cal expr lp od sleep true and false

List of Unix commands

Windows command-line programs and shell builtins

COMMAND.COM Command Prompt Windows PowerShell Recovery Console

File system navigation	cd (chdir) dir popd pushd tree

File management	attrib cacls cipher compact copy del (erase) deltree expand icacls makecab md (mkdir) move rd (rmdir) recover ren (rename) replace rmdir robocopy xcopy

Disk management	chkdsk convert defrag diskcomp diskcopy diskpart fdisk format label subst scandisk sys vol vssadmin

Processes	exit kill powercfg runas sc shutdown start taskkill tasklist

Registry	assoc ftype reg regini regsvr32

User environment	date mode path set setx time title ver whoami

File contents	comp edit edlin fc find findstr print type

Scripting	choice clip cscript doskey echo for goto if more pause prompt rem

Networking	arp getmac hostname ipconfig net use netsh netstat nslookup PathPing ping route tracert

Maintenance and care	driverquery msiexec ntbackup sfc systeminfo w32tm WBAdmin winsat wmic

Boot management	bcdedit bootcfg fixboot fixmbr

Software development	debug exe2bin QBasic

Miscellaneous	cls help

List of DOS commands Environment variables

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whoami

Example

See also

References

External links