List of Internet Relay Chat commands-Cedar Herald Index

This is a list of all Internet Relay Chat commands from RFC 1459, RFC 2812, and extensions added to major IRC daemons. Most IRC clients require commands to be preceded by a slash ("/"). Some commands are actually sent to IRC bots; these are treated by the IRC protocol as ordinary messages, not as /-commands.

Conventions used here: Angle brackets ("<" and ">") are used here to indicate a placeholder for some value, and are not a literal part of a command. Square brackets ("[" and "]") are used to indicate that a value is optional.

List of Internet Relay Chat commands

User commands

ADMIN

Syntax: ADMIN [<target>]

List of Internet Relay Chat commands

Instructs the server to return information about the administrators of the server specified by <target>, where <target> is either a server or a user. If <target> is omitted, the server should return information about the administrators of the current server.

List of Internet Relay Chat commands

AWAY

Syntax: AWAY [<message>]

Provides the server with a message to automatically send in reply to a PRIVMSG directed at the user, but not to a channel they are on. If <message> is omitted, the away status is removed. Defined in RFC 1459.

CNOTICE

Syntax: CNOTICE <nickname> <channel> :<message>

Sends a channel NOTICE message to <nickname> on <channel> that bypasses flood protection limits. The target nickname must be in the same channel as the client issuing the command, and the client must be a channel operator.

Normally an IRC server will limit the number of different targets a client can send messages to within a certain time frame to prevent spammers or bots from mass-messaging users on the network, however this command can be used by channel operators to bypass that limit in their channel. For example, it is often used by help operators that may be communicating with a large number of users in a help channel at one time.

This command is not formally defined in an RFC, but is in use by some IRC networks. Support is indicated in a RPL_ISUPPORT reply (numeric 005) with the CNOTICE keyword

CPRIVMSG

Syntax: CPRIVMSG <nickname> <channel> :<message>

Sends a private message to <nickname> on <channel> that bypasses flood protection limits. The target nickname must be in the same channel as the client issuing the command, and the client must be a channel operator.

This command is not formally defined in an RFC, but is in use by some IRC networks. Support is indicated in a RPL_ISUPPORT reply (numeric 005) with the CPRIVMSG keyword

CONNECT

Syntax: CONNECT <target server> [<port> [<remote server>]] (RFC 1459) CONNECT <target server> <port> [<remote server>] (RFC 2812)

Instructs the server <remote server> (or the current server, if <remote server> is omitted) to connect to <target server> on port <port>. This command should only be available to IRC operators. Defined in RFC 1459; the <port> parameter became mandatory in RFC 2812.

DIE

Syntax: DIE

Instructs the server to shut down. This command may only be issued by IRC server operators. Defined in RFC 2812.

ENCAP

Syntax: :<source> ENCAP <destination> <subcommand> <parameters>

This command is for use by servers to encapsulate commands so that they will propagate across hub servers not yet updated to support them, and indicates the subcommand and its parameters should be passed unaltered to the destination, where it will be unencapsulated and parsed. This facilitates implementation of new features without a need to restart all servers before they are usable across the network.