This week we look at some of the more interesting areas of alias commands, popups and DCC (Direct Chat Connection). The commands here are for mIRC but other IRC client programs (such as Pirch) are more than capable of producing the same effects.
Alias Commands
An alias command is an abbreviation used to represent a longer, more complex command — a shortcut if you like. They are used where you want to use the same command or message repeatedly. For example, suppose I wanted to greet everyone who came into a room with.
Hello! My name is chatter — pleased to meet you!
Obviously, I could type this in each time, but that is a bit long winded! Alternatively, I could set up an alias and type the alias name instead of the whole message. To do this I could enter (in the alias section of mIRC), something like.
/greet Hello! My name is chatter — pleased to meet you!
This would create an alias called greet and it would contain my message. To run this alias, I would type /greet in the message area.
A bit boring this message isn't it? To make it more interesting, it would be better to say the name of the person we are greeting. How? Use an argument (not the kind you have with the other half!); the kind that is used in computers!
An argument is a value that is used by a command. Instead of typing a value, a label is used to store the value we want to use. Labels in mIRC (and some other IRC programs), are represented thus.
/greet Hello $1 my name is chatter — pleased to meet you!
To run this alias we would enter
/greet Gothmog
The command would be displayed as
Hello Gothmog My name is chatter — pleased to meet you!
You can use more than one argument by using $1, $2 and $3. Just make sure you supply the correct number of arguments that the command needs.
Popups
A popup is similar to an alias in that it can be used to abbreviate longer, more complex commands. The difference is, a popup is launched from a menu rather than being typed into the message area.
