Programming a simple IRC (Internet-Relay-Chat) Client

Question

I started using IRC at a young age, and I have always been fascinated with it. As a language exercise, I was thinking about programming a simple IRC client in Ruby with Shoes a

Answer 1

An earlier post mentioned RFC1459. While it is a very good introduction to IRC, it has actually been superseded by RFCs 2810-2813. Here is a more complete list of documentation you need to program anything IRC-related:

• RFC1459 (original RFC; superseded, but still useful)
• RFC2810 (IRC architecture)
• RFC2811 (IRC channel management)
• RFC2812 (IRC client protocol)
• RFC2813 (IRC server protocol)
• CTCP specification
• DCC specification
• Updated CTCP specification (not all clients support this)
• ISupport (response code 005) draft (almost all servers support this nowadays)
• Client capabilities (CAP command) draft (supported by some servers/clients)
• IRCv3 standards and proposals (the future features of IRC, some of which are already widely supported)