talk address [terminal]
The talk utility is a two-way, screen-oriented communication program.
When first invoked, talk shall send a message similar to:
Message from
talk: connection requested by your_addresstalk: 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
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 IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Chapter 11, General Ter-
minal 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 nothing
except exit.
* Typing characters from LC_CTYPE classifications print or space shall
cause those characters to be sent to the recipient’s terminal.
* 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
recipient’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 the 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.