NAME

talk − talk to another user

SYNTAX

talk person [ttyname]

DESCRIPTION

The talk command is a visual communication program which copies lines from your terminal to that of another user.

If you want to talk to someone on the same machine as you, then person is just the person’s login name. If you want 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

The form 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 causes the screen to be reprinted, while the erase, kill, and word kill character functions do not change in talk.  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() disallow messages in order to prevent messy output.

RESTRICTIONS

The version of talk in this release of ULTRIX uses a protocol that is not compatible with the protocol used in earlier versions.

FILES

/etc/hoststo find the recipient’s machine
/etc/utmpto find the recipient’s tty

SEE ALSO

mail(1), mesg(1), who(1), write(1)

Commands