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
Please note the following:
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 because there is no way to know whichtty
to use to get their attention. The connection request can easily show up in an iconified window! Even if you know the remotetty
, the called party must have done amesg y
to accept the request.
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