Your friend "MaryN" is in #coolness with you, and your friend "Tomm" 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 #coolness

You join the channel #coolness.

/who #coolness

Gives some info on users in the channel.

@ = channel op, while * means IRC op.

hello everyone

Everyone on #coolness sees hello everyone. (You need not type in your own nick.)

/me is a pink bunny

Everyone in #coolness sees * yournick is a pink bunny

/leave #coolness

You leave the channel.

/whois Tomm

You get some info about Tomm or whatever nickname you entered.

/whois yournick

This is some info others see about you.

/nick newnick

Changes your nick to "newnick"

/msg Tomm hi there.

Only Tomm sees your message (you don't need to be on the same channel for this to work).

/ping #coolness

Gives information on the delay (round-trip) between you and everybody on #coolness.

/ping Tomm

Gives information on the delay (round-trip) between you and just Tomm.

/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.

/msg =MaryN Hi there!

Once a DCC connection has been established, use the

/msg =nick message format to exchange messages (note the = sign). DCC

does not go through servers, so it are unaffected by server lag, net splits, etc.

/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.