IMPORTANT NOTE : ALL IRC COMMANDS START WITH A "/".
The forward slash is the default command character. Commands on IRC are not case sensitive, and can be abbreviated to their first letters. Anything that does not begin with "/" is assumed to be a message to someone and will be sent to your current channel, or to a person you are chatting with in a private chat (see below).
While some commands may be peculiar to specific IRC client programs, most IRC programs support the following general commands.
/HELP shows general help or help on the given command. This is obviously the most important command and the first one you should investigate.
/LIST lists all current channels.
/JOIN # to join a channel
(example: /JOIN #ESP223 means you have joined a channel called ESP223)
/PART to leave a channel; same as LEAVE
(example: /PART #ESP223)
/QUIT exits your IRC session, (same as BYE and EXIT)
/NICK changes your nickname; you need a nickname to join in the first place. Some systems have character limits (9 usually), and no duplication is allowed. If you try to join with a nickname already in use, you will be asked to change it.
(example: /NICK Rocky changes your nickname to Rocky)
/AWAY leaves a message saying you're away or not paying attention
/WHOIS displays information about someone
/INVITE sends an invitation to another user; used for "invite" channels only
/KICK gets rid of someone on a channel
/TOPIC changes the topic of the channel
/ME sends anything about you to a channel. For example, if you sent the message: "Me grins broadly." and your nickname is Bullwinkle, the other users will see: "Bullwinkle grins broadly."
There are many more commands, and some of them are quite complex. Each IRC client will have a listing and an explanation of the commands it supports.
(48) Where can I get more info?
IRC RFC The Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Protocol is explained and defined in the Request for Comments (RFC) number 1459 written by the founder of IRC J. Oikarinen and D. Reed. This RFC is available by FTP from
ftp://cs-ftp.bu.edu/irc/support/rfc1459.txt
ftp://ftp.tohoku.ac.jp/pub/doc/RFC/rfc1459.txt
IRC Primer A good, simple and basic introduction to IRC is found in the IRC Primer by Nicolas Pioch. Get it by FTP from
ftp://cs-ftp.bu.edu/irc/support/IRCprimer1.1.txt
http://mistral.enst.fr/~pioch/IRC/hints.html
IRC FAQ The IRC Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) by Helen Trillian Rose provides excellent information on a lot of IRC issues. The IRC FAQ is available by FTP at
cs-ftp.bu.edu:/irc/support/alt-irc-faq
ftp.kei.com:/pub/irc/alt-irc-faq
http://www.kei.com/irc.html
Undernet FAQ The Undernet IRC FAQ consists of 2 parts. The initial version was written by Paul Grant and later versions by Mandar M. Mirashi. The latest version can always be found at:
ftp://ftp.undernet.org/undernet/docs/
URL's to the World Wide Web version of this FAQ are:
http://www2.undernet.org:8080/~cs93jtl/underfaq/ http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/irc/undernet-faq/part1/faq.html http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/irc/undernet-faq/part2/faq.html
WWW On the world wide web a lot of additional info can be easily found. Do some simple searches on Yahoo or Webcrawler to find tons of info !!
http://www2.undernet.org:8080/~cs93jtl/IRC.html http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/Chatting/IRC/ http://uptown.turnpike.net/L/Larry14/irc.html
You can also visit some Windows IRC clients World Wide Web pages to get more info : WSIRC http://ftp.clark.net/pub/csamsi/home.html mIRC http://www.mirc.co.uk/index.html mIRC http://www-2.nijenrode.nl/software/mirc/index.html mIRC http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/6000/index.html InteRfaCe http://www.hijinx.com.au/interfac/interfac.htm Chatman http://www.uai.cl/~burton/chatman/ Virc http://www.megalith.co.uk/virc/
Usenet The Usenet alt.irc.- newsgroups provide a lot of information to both newbies and experienced people on IRC. I can highly recommend 'lurking' there for a while!
IRC
On IRC you will find several channels intended to help you with simple as well as more difficult problems. You could give #irchelp, #ircnewbies, #new2irc, #newbies and #wasteland a try. Also most of the popular Windows based IRC clients have their own IRC channel. Check out #mirc, #virc, #interface and #wsirc. Please don't demand help though; we are all volunteers there.