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 which
tty
to use to get the user’s attention. The connection request can easily show up in an iconified window! Even if you know the remotetty
, the called party must have done a mesg y to accept the request.
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