TALK(1)TALK(1)NAMEtalk - talk to another user
SYNOPSIStalk person [ ttyname ]
DESCRIPTION
Talk is a visual communication program which copies lines from your
terminal to that of another user.
If you wish to talk to someone on you 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 :
host!user or
host.user or
host:user or
user@host
though user@host is perhaps preferred.
If you want to talk to a user who is logged in more than once, the
ttyname argument may be used to indicate the appropriate terminal name.
When first called, it sends the message
Message from TalkDaemon@his_machine...
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
message should reply by typing
talk your_name@your_machine
It doesn't matter from which machine the recipient replies, as long as
his login-name is the same. Once communication is established, the two
parties may type simultaneously, with their output appearing in
separate windows. Typing control L will cause the screen to be
reprinted, while your erase, kill, and word kill characters will work
in talk as normal. To exit, just type your interrupt character; talk
then moves the cursor to the bottom of the screen and restores the
terminal.
Permission to talk may be denied or granted by use of the mesg command.
At the outset talking is allowed. Certain commands, in particular
nroff and pr(1) disallow messages in order to prevent messy output.
FILES
/etc/hosts if NetInfo is not running
/etc/utmp to find the recipient's tty
SEE ALSOmesg(1), who(1), mail(1), write(1), netinfo(5)BUGS
The version of talk(1) released with 4.3BSD uses a protocol that is
incompatible with the protocol used in the version released with
4.2BSD.
4.2 Berkeley Distribution May 5, 1986 TALK(1)
