NAME

talk − talk to another user

SYNOPSIS

talk 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 your own machine, then person is simply the person’s login name.  If you wish to talk to a user on another host, then person takes one of the following forms:

host!user
host.user
host:user
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, talk sends the message:

     Message from TalkDaemon@his_machine...
     talk: connection requested by your_name@your_machine.
     talk: respond with: 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 CTRL l causes the screen to be reprinted, while the “erase,” “kill,” and “word kill” characters will operate normally.  To exit, simply type the “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 to find the recipient’s machine

/etc/utmp to find the recipient’s tty

SEE ALSO

mail(1), mesg(1), who(1), write(1) in the INTERACTIVE UNIX System User’s/System Administrator’s Reference Manual.

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. 

\*U  —  Version 1.0