NAME
talk — talk to another user
SYNOPSIS
talk
talk_party
[ttyname]
DESCRIPTION
The
talk
utility is a two-way, screen-oriented communication program.
The command argument
talk_party
can take one the following forms:
user
user@host
host!user
host:user
host.user
where
user
is a login name and
host
is a host name.
The optional command argument,
ttyname,
can be used to specify the terminal to be used when contacting
a user who is logged in more than once. In absence of this
argument,
talk
will try to contact the user on the user's most recently used terminal.
When first invoked,
talk
sends the following message to the party it tries to connect to
(callee):
Message from Talk_Daemon@callee_host
...
talk: connection requested by caller@caller_host
talk: respond with: talk caller@caller_host
At this point, the recipient of the message can reply by typing:
Once communication is established, the two parties can type
simultaneously, with their output displayed in separate regions
of the screen. Characters are processed as follows:
Typing characters from LC_CTYPE classifications
print
or
space
will cause those characters to be sent to the recipient's
terminal.
Typing <control>-L will cause the sender's screen to be refreshed.
Typing the erase, kill or kill word character will delete the last
character, line or word on the sender's terminal, with the action
propagated to the recipient's terminal.
Typing the interrupt character will terminate the local
talk
utility. Once the
talk
session has been terminated on one side, the other side
of the
talk
session will be notified that the session has been terminated
and will be able to do nothing except exit.
Other non-printable characters typed on the sender's terminal are
converted to printable characters before they are sent
to the recipient's terminal.
Permission to be a recipient of a
talk
message can be denied or granted by using the
mesg
utility. However, a user may need other privileges to be able
to access other users' terminals. The
talk
utility will fail when the user lacks the appropriate privileges.
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
talk: XPG4
Printable version
