Forums General Discussion could anyone explain the USER command?

hi,

i couldnt understand the USER command. What exactly does it do?
what is the difference between NICK and USER commands?

isnt there something wrong with the commands below?
because the parameter that comes after the NICK (anick) isnt equal to the parameter that comes after the USER (foo).

NICK anick
USER foo 8 * : something

http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/rfc/chapter4.html#c4_1_3 explains it quite well

i couldnt find the answer to my question at that link.
as you can see, foo <> anick, in my previous message.

The linked article explains it perfectly. You cannot normally issue the /user command and don't need to. Programmes like mIRC do this for you automatically when the server attempts to accept your connection request.

If you were to connect to an IRC server using a DOS window then you would need to issue a /user command after connecting. Doing this takes a lot of skill and with mIRC around it's just not required.

You asked what the USER command does. Certainly the RFC is the best explanation of what the USER command does? Perhaps you didn't understand it, but you should certainly have found it.