How do some clients use '/' for commands?
reddit / irc

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[deleted] · 2014-09-27 23:06

Have they just used an alias? Is there a type of format/command type,
that can accept forward slash commands or do you need to do that for
your client?

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benburhans · 2014-09-28 04:19

In older terminal clients, /command was the only way to execute the
command and you need SOME leading character to differentiate it with.
In some clients, it is configurable.

If you are asking how some "network" commands are done with client-
side /commands, that is client-dependent and varies widely. Some
clients will take any otherwise unrecognized /command and pass it and
all its arguments to the server.

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QuinnLord · 2014-09-28 08:18

I'm talking about the format in which data is sent to the server.
There seems to be some operator that the client has to send to specify
the purpose of that data. For instance you don't just send text, you
send 'PRIVMSG' with that text.

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LordGarak · 2014-09-28 11:15

To the server everything starts with a command and there is no '/'
prefix. The client differentiates text from  commands using the '/'
character.

This document spells everything out on the server end:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1459

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QuinnLord · 2014-09-28 11:29

It is possible for me to send exactly this text without a space before
the forward slash to my channel '/nick BlahBlah'

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LordGarak · 2014-09-28 11:35

Yea if you do /msg #channel /nick BlahBlah or the client dosn't use
the '/'  as the command escape character you can send it directly. The
server dosn't give a damn about '/' and its receiving PRIVMSG #channel
/nick BlahBlah

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QuinnLord · 2014-09-28 11:40

I think it must just be the way the API I'm using has been developed
in that case. There's no way it can accommodate just a some text being
sent to the server, I have to use functions such as say() which is
privmsg and mode() which is mode. I was hoping there was some kind of
way to just send the raw information to the server. Oh well, thank
you.

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LordGarak · 2014-09-28 11:50

Some clients have a /raw command that allows you to send commands
directly to the server without any processing. Its been about 15 years
since I've done anything like this so I can't even remember which
client that was.

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benburhans · 2014-09-28 15:46

Most of the better clients (i.e. dedicated IRC clients, rather than
e.g. Pidgin) do this, either with /raw or /quote.

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Geohump · 2014-09-28 20:34

to fully understand IRC you must use the telnet command to connect to
an IRC server for a few sessions.  That way you will see (and have to
produce) exactly what they say to each otherto communicate.