Commands and text are typed in the same place. By default, commands begin with the character / . If you have a graphical client such as mIRC for Windows, many commands can be executed by clicking on icons with the mouse pointer. It is, however, highly recommended that you learn to type in the basic IRC commands first. When entering commands, pay close attention to spacing and capitalization. The basic commands work on all the good clients.
Some examples are given below. In these, suppose your nick is "yournick", and that you are on the channel #amiria.
Your friend "MaryN" is in #amiria with you, and your friend "Watson" is on IRC but is not on a channel with you. You can apply these examples in general by substituting the relevant nick or channel names.
| What you type
| What happens
|
|---|---|
| /join #amiria | You join the channel #amiria.
|
| /who #amiria | Gives some info on users in the channel. ~ = channel founder, & = channel super op @ = channel op, * = IRC op .
|
| hello everyone | Everyone on #amiria sees <yournick> hello everyone. (You need not type in your own nick.)
|
| /me is a pink bunny | Everyone in #amiria sees * yournick is a pink bunny
|
| /leave #amiria | You leave the channel.(same as /part #amiria)
|
| /whois Watson | You get some info about Watson or whatever nickname you entered.
|
| /whois yournick | This is some info others see about you. (Except your real host or ip)
|
| /nick newnick | Changes your nick to "newnick"
|
| /msg Watson hi there. | Only Watson sees your message (you don't need to be on the same channel for this to work).
|
| /ping Watson | Gives information on the delay (round-trip) between you and just Watson.
|
| /dcc chat MaryN | This sends MaryN a request for a dcc chat session. MaryN types /dcc chat yournick to complete the connection. DCC chat is faster (lag free) and more secure than /msg.
|
| /help | This works in many clients. Try it!
|
| /quit good night! | You quit IRC completely, with the parting comment so that others see "*** Signoff: yournick (good night!)".
|
NOTE: When you are not in a named channel, lines not beginning with a / have no effect, and many commands work differently or fail to work altogether.