another text based protocol.

irc

irc is an ancient text-based chat protocol that is still very popular among programmers.

To play around, pick a nick (like whatevz) and hop on a server (such as irc.freenode.net):

$ nc irc.freenode.net 6667
nick whatevz ☛ pick your nick
user whatevz whatevz irc.freenode.net :whatevz
join #cyberwizard ☛ join a channel
privmsg #cyberwizard :hack the planet!

irc commands

• nick - identify as a user
• user - also identify as a user
• join - join a channel
• privmsg - send a message to a channel

This all works command line. Explains the message formatting...