chat is a minimalistic FIFO and filesystem based IRC client. It creates an irc directory tree with server, channel and nick name directories. In every directory a FIFO file (in) and and normal file (out) is placed.
The in file is used to communicate with the servers and the out files include the server messages. For every channel and every nick name there will be new in and out files.
The basic idea of this is to be able to communicate with an IRC server with standard command line tools. For example if you want to join a channel just do echo "/j #channel" > in and chat creates a new channel directory with in and out file.
Edit config.mk to match your local setup. chat is installed into /usr/local by default.
Afterwards enter the following command to build and install chat (if necessary as root):
$ make clean install
Simply invoke the 'chat' command with required arguments
To make chat a bit more comfortable use it in combination with the multitail program and for example with vim. Run vim in the server directory and use key mapping like: map w1 :.w >> #chat/in map w2 :.w >> #wmchat/in to post to channels.
If you use the next editor line for a new posting you can use ctrl-p for nick completion if you wrote the nick in the past.
No configuration is needed.