Manual Pages for UNIX Operating System command usage for man talk

User Commands                                             talk(1)



NAME
     talk - talk to another user

SYNOPSIS
     talk address [terminal]


DESCRIPTION
     The talk utility is a two-way, screen-oriented communication
     program.


     When first invoked, talk sends a message similar to:

       Message from TalkDaemon@ her_machine at time ...
       talk: connection requested by your_address
       talk: respond with: talk your_address




     to the specified address. At this point,  the  recipient  of
     the message can reply by typing:

       talk your_address




     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:

         o    Typing  the  alert   character   will   alert   the
              recipient's terminal.

         o    Typing Control-L will  cause  the  sender's  screen
              regions to be refreshed.

         o    Typing the erase and kill  characters  will  affect
              the  sender's  terminal  in the manner described by
              the termios(3C) interface.

         o    Typing the interrupt or end-of-file  (EOF)  charac-
              ters  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 talk session has been terminated and  will
              be able to do nothing except exit.

         o    Typing  characters  from  LC_CTYPE  classifications
              print  or  space  will cause those characters to be



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User Commands                                             talk(1)



              sent to the recipient's terminal.

         o    When and only when the stty iexten  local  mode  is
              enabled,  additional special control characters and
              multi-byte or single-byte characters are  processed
              as  printable  characters  if  their wide character
              equivalents are printable.

         o    Typing other non-printable  characters  will  cause
              them  to  be written to the recipient's terminal as
              follows: control characters will appear as a  caret
              (^)  followed  by  the appropriate ASCII character,
              and characters with the  high-order  bit  set  will
              appear  in  "meta" notation. For example, `\003' is
              displayed as `^C' and `\372' as `M-z'.


     Permission to be a recipient of a talk message can be denied
     or  granted by use of the mesg(1) utility. However, a user's
     privilege may further constrain the domain of  accessibility
     of  other users' terminals. Certain commands, such as pr(1),
     disallow messages in  order  to  prevent  interference  with
     their  output.  talk  will  fail  when  the  user  lacks the
     appropriate privileges to perform the requested action.


     Certain block-mode terminals do not have all  the  capabili-
     ties  necessary to support the simultaneous exchange of mes-
     sages required for talk. When this type of  exchange  cannot
     be  supported on such terminals, the implementation may sup-
     port  an  exchange  with  reduced  levels  of   simultaneous
     interaction  or  it  may  report  an  error  describing  the
     terminal-related deficiency.

OPERANDS
     The following operands are supported:

     address     The recipient of the talk session. One  form  of
                 address  is  the  username,  as  returned by the
                 who(1) utility. If you wish to talk  to  someone
                 on  your  own machine, then username is just the
                 person's login name. If you wish to  talk  to  a
                 user  on  another  host, then username is one of
                 the following forms:

                   host!user
                   host.user
                   host:user
                   user@host


                 although user@host is perhaps preferred.



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User Commands                                             talk(1)



     terminal    If the recipient is logged in  more  than  once,
                 terminal can be used to indicate the appropriate
                 terminal name. If terminal is not specified, the
                 talk  message  will  be displayed on one or more
                 accessible terminals in use  by  the  recipient.
                 The  format of terminal will be the same as that
                 returned by  who.


ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
     See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment
     variables  that  affect the execution of talk: LANG, LC_ALL,
     LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.

     TERM    Determine the name of the invoker's  terminal  type.
             If  this  variable  is unset or null, an unspecified
             terminal type will be used.


EXIT STATUS
     The following exit values are returned:

     0     Successful completion.


     >0    An error occurred, or talk was invoked on  a  terminal
           incapable of supporting it.


FILES
     /etc/hosts        host name database


     /var/adm/utmpx    user and accounting information for talk


ATTRIBUTES
     See attributes(5) for descriptions of the  following  attri-
     butes:
















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User Commands                                             talk(1)



     _______________________________________________________________
    |       ATTRIBUTE TYPE        |         ATTRIBUTE VALUE        |
    |_____________________________|________________________________|
    | Availability                | service/network/network-servers|
    |_____________________________|________________________________|
    | Interface Stability         | Committed                      |
    |_____________________________|________________________________|
    | Standard                    | See standards(5).              |
    |_____________________________|________________________________|


SEE ALSO
     mail(1),  mesg(1),   pr(1),   stty(1),   who(1),   write(1),
     termios(3C), attributes(5), environ(5), standards(5)

NOTES
     Typing Control-L redraws the screen, while the erase,  kill,
     and  word  kill  characters  will work in talk as normal. To
     exit, type an interrupt character. talk then moves the  cur-
     sor to the bottom of the screen and restores the terminal to
     its previous state.


































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