Forums Scripts & Popups What does -m switch on /echo do?

Help file says:

"The -m switch indicates that the line should be treated as a user message, not an event."

But what does this actually mean?

It affects the mirc-options/display colors. Because of the -m switch, the code below highlights the channel icon with the color you configured beneath mirc-options/displaycolors/"message". Remove the -m and it highlights the icon with the color beneath "event" instead, because the echo is being done during an event.



Note that "* ChanServ sets mode: +o nick" immediately resets the color to the event color if you had colored the icon as the message color. The -n switch keeps an echo during an $event from highlighting as the event color, so should not be used along with the -m switch.

Thanks - I have updated wikichip to reflect this.

Thanks for editing wikichip! Note that -m probably does more than that, it simply does everything it would do if that line was echoed from an 'IRC event', not sure but for example it should apply stripping option, antiflood option etc.

Edit: it's not applying those options, so maybe it's just for the color of the item in the switch/treebar

I think we need a definitive answer of what -m does because this explanation is actually completely different to the original one.

@Wims - can you please stop removing my explanation from wikichip until you have proven that your explanation is correct.

It seems like we need either:

• Khaled to explain what his code actually does; or
• Someone (who has the time) to experiment and demonstrate exactly what happens

Ok - a little bit of experimentation:

1. /query x1 - opens a query window - button colour black
2. /echo x1 test - button stays black
3. /echo -m x1 - button turns "message" colour
4. switch to window and back to clear colour
Using a remote with "on *:signal:echotest: echo $1-":
5. /signal echotest x1 test - button stays black (even though this is now an event)
6. /signal echotest -m x1 test - button turns "message" colour.

Summary: echo without -m doesn't change colour

Interestingly I also tested the -f and -b flags and these do not work regardless of the "Options/IRC/Options flash on message for Query setting and regardless of whether the query window has had flashing and beeping explicitly enabled and regardless of whether you use the -m flag or not.

I tried this using a variety of events and sending to a channel instead of a query window and get the same results.

So it seems that a variety of echo flags fail to work as expected.

This is on mIRC 7.51. If someone else can do their own experiments to confirm my findings, that would be helpful confirmation. In the mean time I will report this as a bug to Khaled.

I edited back but keep in mind I have the right to edit your change.
I think your experimentation is working as expected though, it's getting clearer that what the help file means with 'message' and 'event' are related to the color option alt+o>display, and that -m is really about the color used for the item in the tree/switchbar. 'event' not being related to mIRC event such as on signal.

I also tested -b -f and -l and they are working as expected for me, remember it's best to test these with a timer and making mIRC not the active application.

Of course you have the right to edit it - it's a wiki. All I ask is that your changes reflect reality as tested not as we might think it should work.



Ah - you are probably right - beeping and flashing are when mIRC is not the active application. I am re-testing this at the moment.

Yes - beeping / flashing does seem to work.