NAME

talk − talk to another user

SYNOPSIS

talk user [ 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 you own machine, then user is just the person’s login name. If you wish to talk to a user on another host, then user is of the form :

host!user
host.user
host:user
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 redraws the screen.  Erase, kill, and word kill characters perform the same functions in talk as they do elsewhere.  To exit, just type your interrupt character; talk moves the cursor to the bottom of the screen and restores the terminal. 

Users can use the mesg command to grant or deny permission to talk.  By default, mesg permits talking.  Certain commands, in particular nroff and pr(1), disallow messages in order to prevent messy output. 

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)

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. 

5 BSD  —  May 5, 1986