NAME

talk − write to another user, using windows

SYNOPSIS

talk user [ tty ]

DESCRIPTION

Talk is a visual communication program which copies lines from the sender’s terminal to that of the specified user. 

To communicate with someone on the same machine, user can be specified by entering the person’s login name.  To communicate with someone on another host, user can be specified in one of the following forms:

host!user
host.user
host:user
user@host

The form user@host is perhaps preferred. 

To communicate with someone who is logged in more than once, the user should indicate the appropriate terminal name using the tty argument. 

The following message is initially sent to the user with whom the sender wishes to communicate:

     Message from TalkDaemon@recipient’s-machine...
     talk: connection requested by sender’s-name@sender’s-machine
     talk: respond with: talk sender’s-name@sender’s-machine

At this point, the recipient of the message should reply by typing:

     talk sender’s-name@sender’s-machine

It does not matter from which machine the recipient replies, as long as his or her login name is the same. 

Once communication has been established, the two parties may type simultaneously, with their output appearing in separate windows.  To refresh the screen, the user can enter CTRL-L.  The erase, kill, and word kill characters work as usual.  To exit, the user can type his or her interrupt character; the cursor is then moved to the bottom of the screen and the terminal is restored. 

Permission to communicate using talk may be denied or granted by the prospective recipient, using the mesg command.  At the outset, communication via talk is allowed.  Certain commands, in particular nroff and pr(1), disallow messages in order to prevent the disruption of output. 

FILES

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

SEE ALSO

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

4th Berkeley Distribution  —  1 August 1985