Feeling lost? The command hostname will tell you the name
of the workstation you are on, and, if available, host will give you
the network name and number of a computer:
$ hostname What is name of machine I'm on? physics The short name. $ host physics What is full name/number of physics? physics.osrt.edu is 128.193.96.1 The full name.
These simple pieces of data are particularly useful in networked computing. You can check if your computer can look up the name of another machine (or of itself), and you can check which machine is feeding a specific window on your screen. The full name obtained from host is that which can be recognized from any machine in the world, the short name obtained from hostname can only be used locally.