who am i

whoami is a command found on most Unix-like operating systems, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. It is a concatenation of the words "Who am I?" and prints the effective userid (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 login. 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 command is also available as part of the Windows 2000 Resource Kit[1] and Windows XP SP2 Support Tools.
Posted on May 31st, 2014

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