Name
talk
Synopsis
talkuser
[@hostname
] [tty
]
Exchanges typed communication with another user
who is on the local machine or on the 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 a
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 amesg y
to accept the request.
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