1TALK(1)                     General Commands Manual                    TALK(1)
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NAME

6       talk - talk to another user
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SYNOPSIS

9       talk person [ ttyname ]
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DESCRIPTION

12       Talk  is  a  visual  communication program which copies lines from your
13       terminal to that of another user.
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15       If you wish to talk to someone on you own machine, then person is  just
16       the person's login name. If you wish to talk to a user on another host,
17       then person is of the form :
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19                           host!user  or
20                           host.user  or
21                           host:user  or
22                           user@host
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24       though host@user is perhaps preferred.
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26       If you want to talk to a user who is logged in more than once, the tty‐
27       name argument may be used to indicate the appropriate terminal name.
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29       When first called, it sends the message
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31            Message from TalkDaemon@his_machine...
32            talk: connection requested by your_name@your_machine.
33            talk: respond with: talk your_name@your_machine
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35       to  the  user  you wish to talk to. At this point, the recipient of the
36       message should reply by typing
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38            talk  your_name@your_machine
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40       It doesn't matter from which machine the recipient replies, as long  as
41       his login-name is the same.  Once communication is established, the two
42       parties may type simultaneously, with their output appearing  in  sepa‐
43       rate  windows.  Typing control L will cause the screen to be reprinted,
44       while your erase, kill, and word kill characters will work in  talk  as
45       normal.   To  exit, just type your interrupt character; talk then moves
46       the cursor to the bottom of the screen and restores the terminal.
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48       Permission to talk may be denied or granted by use of the mesg command.
49       At  the  outset  talking  is  allowed.  Certain commands, in particular
50       nroff and pr(1) disallow messages in order to prevent messy output.
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FILES

53       /etc/hosts     to find the recipient's machine
54       /var/run/utmp  to find the recipient's tty
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SEE ALSO

57       mesg(1), who(1), mail(1), write(1)
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BUGS

60       The version of talk(1) released with 4.3BSD uses  a  protocol  that  is
61       incompatible  with  the  protocol  used  in  the  version released with
62       4.2BSD.
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664.2 Berkeley Distribution      November 27, 1996                       TALK(1)