Name
talk
Synopsis
talkuser
[@hostname
] [tty
]
Exchange typed communication with another
user who is on the local machine or on
machine hostname. talk might be useful when you’re logged
in via modem and need something quickly, making it inconvenient to
telephone or send email. talk
splits your screen into two windows. When connection is
established, you type in the top half while
user’s typing appears in the bottom half.
Type ^L
to redraw the screen
and ^C
(or interrupt) to exit.
If user is logged in more than once, use
tty to specify the terminal line. The
user needs to have used mesg y
.
Notes
There are different versions of talk that use different protocols; interoperability across different Unix systems is very limited.
talk is also not very useful if the remote user you are “calling” is using a windowing environment, since there is no way for you to know which tty to use to get their attention. The connection request could easily show up in an iconified window! Even if you know the remote tty, the called party must have done a
mesg y
to accept the request, and the called system must allow incoming talk connections. All in all, this command is not as useful as it once was.
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