IRC clients - all of them - are really nothing more than glorified
line editors with 'telnet' built in. That's why all clients have one
primary text input spot: it's all you need. The process: you type
a line of text, your client sends it to the server. That's it!
Well, okay, that's not quite it. There is also a distinction
between 'messages' and 'commands'. Messages are the things that you
want other people to see, while commands are intended for the server.
Clients tell the difference by treating input beginning with a '/'
as a command. Otherwise, your input becomes a message.
What follows is information on the basic game commands you'll need to
navigate your way through an everyday IRC session. Most modern
GUI clients are able to handle all of these through menu items and
so forth, but I'll only be covering text-based commands as they are
common to all clients while the mouse stuff is not.
Connections
A rather key part of an IRC session, this step is often handled in
a special way by whatever client you might be using. It may still be
helpful at times to know these commands, say if you want to reconnect
or connect to a second server.
- Connecting
/server <server name>
- Disconnecting
/discon
If you're using a UNIX client, the typical way to connect is to
set the 'IRCSERVER' environment variable before starting the client:
$ export IRCSERVER=<server name>
Personal Information
Nicknames. Everyone on IRC has a nickname, or
handle. It can be your real name, if you like, or you may make one
up. Regardless, to specify or change your nickname, use the
following command:
/nick <your nickname>
If you're using a UNIX client, the typical way to specify your
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nickname is to set the 'IRCNICK' environment variable before starting
the client:
$ export IRCNICK=<your nickname>
Real Names. When someone queries your personal
information on IRC, they will see four pieces of information: your
nick, the owner (username) of the client, the hostname of the client
machine, and your real name. You must specify the latter field before
connecting, so this is usually handled by some field in your GUI.
To do it manually, use this command:
/set realname <your real name>
Many people use this field to display their email address instead
of their name.
If you're using a UNIX client, the typical way to specify your
real name is to set the 'IRCNAME' environment variable before starting
the client:
$ export IRCNAME=<your real name>
Personal Communication
Since we don't always want our words to be heard by an entire
channel, there is the useful concept of a private message in IRC.
Private messages are sent only to the recipient specified in the
command:
/msg <nickname> <message>
Channels
Most understand the concept of a 'chat room', and IRC channels
are just that. In IRC, channels all have names of the form
'#name', so when you specify a channel, don't forget to
prepend a '#'.
Listing. To display a list of all channels
currently available on the server and the number of people currently
in each, use this command:
/list
Try not to do this too many times on a major IRC server, though - the
list can be quite long.
Coming and going. Once you know the name of a
channel you like, you may type the following to join that channel:
/join #<channel>
You may also be a member of more than one channel at a time.
This command provides the mechanism to switch your active channel.
That is, if you are currently a member of channels #a and #b,
typing '/join #a' will send any subsquent messages to #a.
To leave a channel, type this:
/part #<channel>
Communicating. This is the most important part,
and also the easiest. To send a message to a channel, just type it
and hit enter!
You may also send 'actions' to a channel with this command:
/me <action>
Using this command will show others in the channel a message of
the form '<your nick> <action>'.
There are many, many other commands available in IRC. Most clients
provide a help command that will give you a brief summary of each
command's usage:
/help <command>
For more complete help, see the links at the bottom of this page.
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