Next: Getting started with rcirc, Up: Basics [Contents][Index]
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a form of instant communication over the Internet. It is mainly designed for group (many-to-many) communication in discussion forums called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication.
Contrary to most Instant Messenger (IM) systems, users usually don’t connect to a central server. Instead, users connect to a random server in a network, and servers relay messages from one to the next.
Here’s a typical example:
When you connect to the Freenode network
(http://freenode.net/
), you point your IRC client at the
server irc.freenode.net
. That server will redirect your client
to a random server on the network, such as zelazny.freenode.net
.
Once you’re connected, you can send messages to all other users
connected to the same network, and you can join all channels on the same
network. You might join the #emacs
and the #rcirc
channels, for example. (Typically, channel names begin with a hash
character.)
Once you have joined a channel, anything you type will be broadcast to all the other users on the same channel.
If you want to address someone specifically, for example as an answer to a question, it is customary to prefix the message with the nick followed by a colon, like this:
deego: fsbot rules!
Since this is so common, you can use TAB to do nick completion.