1talk(1) User Commands talk(1)
2
6 talk - talk to another user
7
9 talk address [terminal]
10
13 The talk utility is a two-way, screen-oriented communication program.
14 When first invoked, talk sends a message similar to:
17 Message from TalkDaemon@ her_machine at time ...
19 talk: connection requested by your_address
20 talk: respond with: talk your_address
21 to the specified address. At this point, the recipient of the message
26 can reply by typing:
27 talk your_address
29 Once communication is established, the two parties can type simultane‐
34 ously, with their output displayed in separate regions of the screen.
35 Characters are processed as follows:
36 o Typing the alert character will alert the recipient's termi‐
38 nal.
39 o Typing Control-L will cause the sender's screen regions to
41 be refreshed.
42 o Typing the erase and kill characters will affect the
44 sender's terminal in the manner described by the termios(3C)
45 interface.
46 o Typing the interrupt or end-of-file (EOF) characters will
48 terminate the local talk utility. Once the talk session has
49 been terminated on one side, the other side of the talk ses‐
50 sion will be notified that the talk session has been termi‐
51 nated and will be able to do nothing except exit.
52 o Typing characters from LC_CTYPE classifications print or
54 space will cause those characters to be sent to the recipi‐
55 ent's terminal.
56 o When and only when the stty iexten local mode is enabled,
58 additional special control characters and multi-byte or sin‐
59 gle-byte characters are processed as printable characters if
60 their wide character equivalents are printable.
61 o Typing other non-printable characters will cause them to be
63 written to the recipient's terminal as follows: control
64 characters will appear as a caret (^) followed by the appro‐
65 priate ASCII character, and characters with the high-order
66 bit set will appear in "meta" notation. For example, `\003'
67 is displayed as `^C' and `\372' as `M−z'.
68 Permission to be a recipient of a talk message can be denied or granted
71 by use of the mesg(1) utility. However, a user's privilege may further
72 constrain the domain of accessibility of other users' terminals. Cer‐
73 tain commands, such as pr(1), disallow messages in order to prevent
74 interference with their output. talk will fail when the user lacks the
75 appropriate privileges to perform the requested action.
76 Certain block-mode terminals do not have all the capabilities necessary
79 to support the simultaneous exchange of messages required for talk.
80 When this type of exchange cannot be supported on such terminals, the
81 implementation may support an exchange with reduced levels of simulta‐
82 neous interaction or it may report an error describing the terminal-
83 related deficiency.
84
86 The following operands are supported:
87 address The recipient of the talk session. One form of address is
89 the username, as returned by the who(1) utility. If you
90 wish to talk to someone on your own machine, then username
91 is just the person's login name. If you wish to talk to a
92 user on another host, then username is one of the following
93 forms:
94 host!user
96 host.user
97 host:user
98 user@host
99 although user@host is perhaps preferred.
102 terminal If the recipient is logged in more than once, terminal can
105 be used to indicate the appropriate terminal name. If ter‐
106 minal is not specified, the talk message will be displayed
107 on one or more accessible terminals in use by the recipi‐
108 ent. The format of terminal will be the same as that
109 returned by who.
110
113 See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables
114 that affect the execution of talk: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES,
115 and NLSPATH.
116 TERM Determine the name of the invoker's terminal type. If this
118 variable is unset or null, an unspecified terminal type will be
119 used.
120
123 The following exit values are returned:
124 0 Successful completion.
126 >0 An error occurred, or talk was invoked on a terminal incapable of
129 supporting it.
130
133 /etc/hosts host name database
134 /var/adm/utmpx user and accounting information for talk
137
140 See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
141 ┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
146 │ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
147 ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
148 │Availability │SUNWrcmds │
149 ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
150 │Interface Stability │Standard │
151 └─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
152
154 mail(1), mesg(1), pr(1), stty(1), who(1), write(1), termios(3C),
155 attributes(5), environ(5), standards(5)
156
158 Typing Control-L redraws the screen, while the erase, kill, and word
159 kill characters will work in talk as normal. To exit, type an interrupt
160 character. talk then moves the cursor to the bottom of the screen and
161 restores the terminal to its previous state.
162SunOS 5.11 6 Nov 2000 talk(1)