IRC client

IRC client is a client program for working with the IRC-servers.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a form of real-time Internet text messaging (chat) or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfers via Direct Client-to-Client.

IRC was created by Jarkko Oikarinen in August 1988 to replace a program called MUT (MultiUser Talk) on a BBS called OuluBox in Finland. Oikarinen found inspiration in a chat system known as Bitnet Relay, which operated on the BITNET.

The basic means of communication in an established IRC session is a channel. Channels in a server can be displayed using the IRC command LIST that lists all currently available channels. Users can join to a channel using the JOIN command, in most clients available as /join #channelname. Messages sent to the joined channels are then relayed to all other users. Channels that are available across an entire IRC network are prepended with a '#', while those local to a server use '&'. Other non-standard and less common channel types include '+' channels—'modeless' channels without operators — and '!' channels, a form of timestamped channel on normally non-timestamped networks.