talk(1)                                                            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) characters 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 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  charac-
            ters 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, `03' 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 fur-
       ther constrain the domain of accessibility of other users' terminals. Certain commands, such as pr(1), disallow messages in order  to  pre-
       vent 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 capabilities necessary to support the simultaneous exchange of messages required for talk.
       When this type of exchange cannot be supported on such terminals, the implementation may support an exchange with reduced levels of  simul-
       taneous 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.

       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  for-
                       mat 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_MES-
       SAGES, 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 attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE         |      ATTRIBUTE VALUE        |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability                 |SUNWrcmds                    |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Interface Stability          |Standard                     |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

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 inter-
       rupt character. talk then moves the cursor to the bottom of the screen and restores the terminal to its previous state.

SunOS 5.10                                                          6 Nov 2000                                                             talk(1)