solaris - talk (1)

     talk - talk to another user

     talk address [ terminal ]

     SUNWcsu

     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 CTRL-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 ter-
          mios(3) 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 ses-
          sion 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 characters 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 `^' followed by the
          appropriate  ASCII  character,  and characters with the
          high-order bit set will appear in "meta" notation.  For
          example,  `\003' 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 further constrain the domain of  accessibility
     of other users' terminals.  Certain commands, such as pr(1),
     disallow messages in  order  to  prevent  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  capabili-
     ties  necessary to support the simultaneous exchange of mes-
     sages required for talk.  When this type of exchange  cannot
     be  supported on such terminals, the implementation may sup-
     port  an  exchange  with  reduced  levels  of   simultaneous
     interaction  or  it  may  report  an  error  describing  the
     terminal-related deficiency.

     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.  Other address formats  and  how
                 they are handled are unspecified.

     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  reci-
                 pient.   The format of terminal will be the same
                 as that returned by who.

     See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment
     variables  that  affect  the  execution  of talk:  LC_CTYPE,
     LC_MESSAGES, 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.

     The following exit values are returned:

     0   Successful completion.

     >0  An error occurred or talk  was  invoked  on  a  terminal
         incapable of supporting it.

     /etc/hosts          host name database
     /var/adm/utmp       user and accounting information for talk

     mail(1), mesg(1), pr(1),  stty(1),  who(1),  write(1),  ter-
     mios(3), environ(5)

     Because the handling of non-printable, non-space  characters
     is tied to the stty(1) description of iexten, implementation
     extensions within the terminal driver can be accessed.   For
     example, some implementations provide line editing functions
     with certain control character sequences.