irc

Is there a way to get the users of an IRC channel without joining it?

I want to be able to get the list of users and their details from an IRC channel without joining it and thus increasing its user count.

So instead of issuing JOIN #chan and then NAMES #chan to get the list of users, I can run the latter command. Is this possible?

Solution

  • You can issue NAMES for a channel where you are not in, but NAMES does not display users that are invisible (usermode +i).

    Most servers set the usermode +i on connect, and some don't even allow changing it.

    So if you don't have everyone set their usermode -i, you can't see them when not in the channel.

    The RFC is not very specific about usermode +i. Some say that you can see users with +i on a NAMES reply if you share a common channel, and others say that you can not.