.\" Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted
.\" provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
.\" duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation,
.\" advertising materials, and other materials related to such
.\" distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed
.\" by the University of California, Berkeley. The name of the
.\" University may not be used to endorse or promote products derived
.\" from this software without specific prior written permission.
.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR
.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED
.\" WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
.\" @(#)talk.1 6.5 (Berkeley) %G%
talk \- talk to another user
\fITalk\fP 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 \fIperson\fP
is just the person's login name. If you wish to talk to a user on
another host, then \fIperson\fP is of the form \fIuser@host\fP.
If you want to talk to a user who is logged in more than once, the
\fIttyname\fP argument may be used to indicate the appropriate terminal
name, where \fIttyname\fP is of the form ``ttyXX''.
When first called, \fItalk\fP 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 (^L) will cause the screen to
be reprinted, while your erase, kill, and word kill characters will
behave normally. To exit, just type your interrupt character; \fItalk\fP
then moves the cursor to the bottom of the screen and restores the
terminal to its previous state.
Permission to talk may be denied or granted by use of the \fImesg\fP
command. At the outset talking is allowed. Certain commands, in
particular \fInroff\fP and \fIpr\fP, disallow messages in order to
/etc/hosts to find the recipient's machine
/etc/utmp to find the recipient's tty
mail(1), mesg(1), who(1), write(1)
The version of \fItalk\fP(1) released with 4.3BSD uses a protocol that
is incompatible with the protocol used in the version released with 4.2BSD.