me

Send an action description to the current conversation.

Synopsis

/me action-description

Description

me describes what you are doing in the third person, as though someone is watching you. It selects the current window's query target first; if there is no query, it uses the current channel. A query therefore takes precedence even when the window also has a channel.

The whole argument text is the description. It must be nonempty; otherwise EPIC prints usage. With neither a query nor a channel, it reports No target, neither channel nor query. There are no options, and the built-in is always registered.

The description is sent as a CTCP ACTION request, framed with control-A delimiters and carried by IRC PRIVMSG. Destination encoding rules apply. Long descriptions can be truncated by the CTCP sender's fixed buffer. The command always selects request mode, including when called from a message hook; it does not automatically switch to a CTCP reply.

After attempting the send, EPIC offers the target and original description to the send_action hook. Unless that hook suppresses display, it echoes:

* your-nickname action-description

This echo uses action-level output routing. Suppressing it does not cancel the request already attempted. The outgoing send_ctcp hook also observes the framed request, but its return value does not cancel sending. A local echo does not confirm delivery. See on.

Example

/me doesn't want to go to work today

If your nickname is foobar, recipients may see:

* foobar doesn't want to go to work today

Related commands and restrictions

describe supplies an explicit target and produces a different local echo. /describe target description and /ctcp target action description use the same kind of transmitted action, but their argument handling, local output, and message-context behavior differ. See ctcp.

IRC destinations need a usable server connection. Server policy determines delivery, and recipients' clients determine how the action appears. Unsupported CTCP actions may be ignored or handled differently; an error is not proof of a client compatibility problem. The command does not wait for a response.

Source

Registration and mecmd are in source/commands.c. Query-before-channel target selection is in source/window.c. Framing, recoding, outgoing hooks, and incoming action display are in source/ctcp.c, with message delivery through the sending helpers in source/commands.c and source/server.c.