talk man page on Gentoo

Man page or keyword search:  
man Server   6889 pages
apropos Keyword Search (all sections)
Output format
Gentoo logo
[printable version]

TALK(1P)		   POSIX Programmer's Manual		      TALK(1P)

PROLOG
       This  manual  page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux
       implementation of this interface may differ (consult the	 corresponding
       Linux  manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may
       not be implemented on Linux.

NAME
       talktalk to another user

SYNOPSIS
       talk address [terminal]

DESCRIPTION
       The talk utility is a two-way, screen-oriented communication program.

       When first invoked, talk shall send a message similar to:

	   Message from <unspecified string>
	   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 simultane‐
       ously, with their output displayed in separate regions of  the  screen.
       Characters shall be processed as follows:

	*  Typing the <alert> character shall alert the recipient's terminal.

	*  Typing  <control>‐L	shall  cause the sender's screen regions to be
	   refreshed.

	*  Typing the erase and kill characters shall affect the sender's ter‐
	   minal  in the manner described by the termios interface in the Base
	   Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter	11,  General  Terminal
	   Interface.

	*  Typing  the interrupt or end-of-file characters shall terminate the
	   local talk utility. Once the talk session has  been	terminated  on
	   one side, the other side of the talk session shall be notified that
	   the talk session has been terminated and shall be able to do	 noth‐
	   ing except exit.

	*  Typing  characters  from  LC_CTYPE  classifications	print or space
	   shall cause those characters to be sent to the  recipient's	termi‐
	   nal.

	*  When and only when the stty iexten local mode is enabled, the exis‐
	   tence and processing of additional special control  characters  and
	   multi-byte	or  single-byte	 functions  shall  be  implementation-
	   defined.

	*  Typing other non-printable characters shall	cause  implementation-
	   defined sequences of printable characters to be sent to the recipi‐
	   ent's terminal.

       Permission to be a recipient of a talk message can be denied or granted
       by  use	of  the	 mesg utility. However, a user's privilege may further
       constrain the domain of accessibility of other  users'  terminals.  The
       talk  utility  shall fail when the user lacks appropriate privileges to
       perform the requested action.

       Certain block-mode terminals do not have all the capabilities necessary
       to  support  the	 simultaneous  exchange of messages required for talk.
       When this type of exchange cannot be supported on such  terminals,  the
       implementation  may support an exchange with reduced levels of simulta‐
       neous interaction or it may report an error  describing	the  terminal-
       related deficiency.

OPTIONS
       None.

OPERANDS
       The following operands shall be supported:

       address	 The recipient of the talk session. One form of address is the
		 <user name>, as returned by the who  utility.	Other  address
		 formats and how they are handled are unspecified.

       terminal	 If  the  recipient  is logged in more than once, the terminal
		 argument can be used to  indicate  the	 appropriate  terminal
		 name. If terminal is not specified, the talk message shall be
		 displayed on one or more accessible terminals in use  by  the
		 recipient.  The  format of terminal shall be the same as that
		 returned by the who utility.

STDIN
       Characters read from standard input shall be copied to the  recipient's
       terminal in an unspecified manner. If standard input is not a terminal,
       talk shall write a diagnostic message and exit with a non-zero status.

INPUT FILES
       None.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
       The following environment variables shall affect the execution of talk:

       LANG	 Provide a default value for  the  internationalization	 vari‐
		 ables	that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions vol‐
		 ume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization	 Vari‐
		 ables	for  the  precedence of internationalization variables
		 used to determine the values of locale categories.)

       LC_ALL	 If set to a non-empty string value, override  the  values  of
		 all the other internationalization variables.

       LC_CTYPE	 Determine  the	 locale for the interpretation of sequences of
		 bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as
		 opposed  to  multi-byte  characters  in  arguments  and input
		 files). If the recipient's locale does not  use  an  LC_CTYPE
		 equivalent to the sender's, the results are undefined.

       LC_MESSAGES
		 Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format
		 and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error
		 and informative messages written to standard output.

       NLSPATH	 Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing
		 of LC_MESSAGES.

       TERM	 Determine the name of the invoker's terminal  type.  If  this
		 variable  is  unset  or null, an unspecified default terminal
		 type shall be used.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
       When the talk utility receives a SIGINT signal, the utility shall  ter‐
       minate  and  exit with a zero status. It shall take the standard action
       for all other signals.

STDOUT
       If standard output is a terminal, characters copied  from  the  recipi‐
       ent's standard input may be written to standard output. Standard output
       also may be used for diagnostic messages. If standard output is	not  a
       terminal, talk shall exit with a non-zero status.

STDERR
       None.

OUTPUT FILES
       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
       None.

EXIT STATUS
       The following exit values shall be returned:

	0    Successful completion.

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

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
       Default.

       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE
       Because the handling of non-printable, non-<space> characters  is  tied
       to the stty 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.

EXAMPLES
       None.

RATIONALE
       The write utility was included in this volume of POSIX.1‐2008 since  it
       can  be implemented on all terminal types. The talk utility, which can‐
       not be implemented on certain terminals, was considered to be a	``bet‐
       ter''  communications  interface.  Both	of these programs are in wide‐
       spread use on historical implementations.   Therefore,  both  utilities
       have been specified.

       All  references	to  networking abilities (talking to a user on another
       system) were removed as being outside  the  scope  of  this  volume  of
       POSIX.1‐2008.

       Historical BSD and System V versions of talk terminate both of the con‐
       versations when either user breaks out of the session. This can lead to
       adverse consequences if a user unwittingly continues to enter text that
       is interpreted by the shell when	 the  other  terminates	 the  session.
       Therefore, the version of talk specified by this volume of POSIX.1‐2008
       requires both users to terminate their end of the session explicitly.

       Only messages sent to the terminal of the invoking user can be interna‐
       tionalized in any way:

	*  The	original  ``Message  from  <unspecified string> ...''  message
	   sent to the terminal of the recipient cannot	 be  internationalized
	   because  the environment of the recipient is as yet inaccessible to
	   the talk utility. The environment of the invoking party is  irrele‐
	   vant.

	*  Subsequent communication between the two parties cannot be interna‐
	   tionalized because the two parties may specify different  languages
	   in  their environment (and non-portable characters cannot be mapped
	   from one language to another).

	*  Neither party can be required to communicate in  a  language	 other
	   than	 C  and/or  the	 one  specified	 by  their environment because
	   unavailable terminal hardware support (for example, fonts)  may  be
	   required.

       The  text  in  the STDOUT section reflects the usage of the verb ``dis‐
       play'' in this section; some talk implementations actually use standard
       output  to  write to the terminal, but this volume of POSIX.1‐2008 does
       not require that to be the case.

       The format of the terminal name is unspecified, but the descriptions of
       ps,  talk,  who, and write require that they all use or accept the same
       format.

       The handling of non-printable characters is  partially  implementation-
       defined	because	 the details of mapping them to printable sequences is
       not needed by the user. Historical implementations, for	security  rea‐
       sons,  disallow	the  transmission of non-printable characters that may
       send commands to the other terminal.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
       None.

SEE ALSO
       mesg, stty, who, write

       The Base Definitions volume of  POSIX.1‐2008,  Chapter  8,  Environment
       Variables, Chapter 11, General Terminal Interface

COPYRIGHT
       Portions	 of  this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
       from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology
       --  Portable  Operating	System	Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
       Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of Electri‐
       cal  and	 Electronics  Engineers,  Inc  and  The	 Open Group.  (This is
       POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum	 1  applied.)  In  the
       event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and
       The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group  Standard
       is  the	referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online
       at http://www.unix.org/online.html .

       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear  in  this  page  are
       most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source
       files to man page format. To report such errors,	 see  https://www.ker‐
       nel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .

IEEE/The Open Group		     2013			      TALK(1P)
[top]

List of man pages available for Gentoo

Copyright (c) for man pages and the logo by the respective OS vendor.

For those who want to learn more, the polarhome community provides shell access and support.

[legal] [privacy] [GNU] [policy] [cookies] [netiquette] [sponsors] [FAQ]
Tweet
Polarhome, production since 1999.
Member of Polarhome portal.
Based on Fawad Halim's script.
....................................................................
Vote for polarhome
Free Shell Accounts :: the biggest list on the net