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### 5.1 Connecting to an IRC Server

The easiest way to connect to an IRC server is to call `M-x erc`. If you want to assign this function to a keystroke, the following will help you figure out its parameters.

Function: erc

  Select connection parameters and run ERC. Non-interactively, it takes the following keyword arguments.

  - server
  - port
  - nick
  - password
  - full-name

  That is, if called with the following arguments, server and full-name will be set to those values, whereas `erc-compute-port`, `erc-compute-nick` and `erc-compute-full-name` will be invoked for the values of the other parameters.

      (erc :server "irc.freenode.net" :full-name "Harry S Truman")

#### Server

Function: erc-compute-server &optional server

  Return an IRC server name.

  This tries a number of increasingly more default methods until a non-`nil` value is found.

  - server (the argument passed to this function)
  - The `erc-server` option
  - The value of the IRCSERVER environment variable
  - The `erc-default-server` variable

User Option: erc-server

  IRC server to use if one is not provided.

#### Port

Function: erc-compute-port &optional port

  Return a port for an IRC server.

  This tries a number of increasingly more default methods until a non-`nil` value is found.

  - port (the argument passed to this function)
  - The `erc-port` option
  - The `erc-default-port` variable

User Option: erc-port

  IRC port to use if not specified.

  This can be either a string or a number.

#### Nick

Function: erc-compute-nick &optional nick

  Return user’s IRC nick.

  This tries a number of increasingly more default methods until a non-`nil` value is found.

  - nick (the argument passed to this function)
  - The `erc-nick` option
  - The value of the IRCNICK environment variable
  - The result from the `user-login-name` function

User Option: erc-nick

  Nickname to use if one is not provided.

  This can be either a string, or a list of strings. In the latter case, if the first nick in the list is already in use, other nicks are tried in the list order.

User Option: erc-format-nick-function

  A function to format a nickname for message display

  You can set this to `erc-format-@nick` to display user mode prefix

    (setq erc-format-nick-function 'erc-format-@nick)

User Option: erc-nick-uniquifier

  The string to append to the nick if it is already in use.

User Option: erc-try-new-nick-p

  If the nickname you chose isn’t available, and this option is non-`nil`, ERC should automatically attempt to connect with another nickname.

  You can manually set another nickname with the /NICK command.

#### Password

User Option: erc-prompt-for-password

  If non-`nil` (the default), `M-x erc` prompts for a password.

If you prefer, you can set this option to `nil` and use the `auth-source` mechanism to store your password. For instance, if you use `~/.authinfo` as your auth-source backend, then put something like the following in that file:

    machine irc.example.net login "#fsf" password sEcReT

ERC also consults `auth-source` to find any channel keys required for the channels that you wish to autojoin, as specified by the variable `erc-autojoin-channels-alist`.

For more details, see auth-source in Emacs auth-source Library.

#### Full name

Function: erc-compute-full-name &optional full-name

  Return user’s full name.

  This tries a number of increasingly more default methods until a non-`nil` value is found.

  - full-name (the argument passed to this function)
  - The `erc-user-full-name` option
  - The value of the IRCNAME environment variable
  - The result from the `user-full-name` function

User Option: erc-user-full-name

  User full name.

  This can be either a string or a function to call.

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