TALK(1) BSD Reference Manual TALK(1)NAMEtalk - talk to another user
SYNOPSIStalk [-Hs] person [ttyname]
DESCRIPTIONtalk is a visual communication program which copies lines from your ter-
minal to that of another user.
The command arguments are as follows:
-H Don't escape characters with the high bit set. This may be use-
ful for certain character sets, but could cause erratic
behaviour on some terminals.
-s Use smooth scrolling in the talk window. The default is to clear
the next two rows and jump from the bottom of the window to the
top.
person If you wish to talk to someone on your own machine, then person
is just the person's login name. If you wish to talk to a user
on another host, then person is of the form 'user@host'.
ttyname If you wish to talk to a user who is logged in more than once,
the ttyname argument may be used to indicate the appropriate
terminal name, where ttyname is of the form 'ttyXX'.
When first called, talk sends the message
Message from Talk_Daemon@localhost...
talk: connection requested by your_name@your_machine.
talk: respond with: talk your_name@your_machine
to the user you wish to talk to. At this point, the recipient of the mes-
sage should reply by typing
$ talk your_name@your_machine
It doesn't matter from which machine the recipient replies, as long as
the login name is the same. If the machine is not the one to which the
talk request was sent, it is noted on the screen. Once communication is
established, the two parties may type simultaneously, with their output
appearing in separate windows. Typing control-L ('^L') will cause the
screen to be reprinted, while the erase, kill, and word kill characters
will behave normally. To exit, just type the interrupt character; talk
then moves the cursor to the bottom of the screen and restores the termi-
nal to its previous state.
Permission to talk may be denied or granted by use of the mesg(1) com-
mand. At the outset talking is allowed. Certain commands, in particular
nroff(1) and pr(1), disallow messages in order to prevent messy output.
FILES
/etc/hosts to find the recipient's machine
/var/run/utmp to find the recipient's tty
SEE ALSOmail(1), mesg(1), who(1), write(1), talkd(8)HISTORY
The talk command appeared in 4.2BSD.
BUGS
The version of talk released with 4.3BSD uses a protocol that is incompa-
tible with the protocol used in the version released with 4.2BSD.
MirOS BSD #10-current June 6, 1993 1
