With -i, message string argument now optional, stdin is read if it is absent.

NEWS

 			irker history 
+Repository head:
+  With -i, message string argument now optional, stdin is read if it is absent.
 
 2.10: 2014-06-19
   irk no longer fails on ircs channel URLs.

irkerd

@@ -1001,10 +1001,12 @@ if __name__ == '__main__':
     LOG.info("irkerd version %s" % version)
     if args.immediate:
         if not args.message:
-            LOG.error(
-                '--immediate set (%r), but message argument not given' % (
-                args.immediate))
-            raise SystemExit(1)
+            # We want newline to become '\n' and tab to become '\t';
+            # the JSON decoder will undo these transformations.
+            # This will also encode backslash, backspace, formfeed,
+            # and high-half characters, which might produce unexpected
+            # results on output.
+            args.message = sys.stdin.read().encode("string_escape") 
         irker.irc.add_event_handler("quit", lambda _c, _e: sys.exit(0))
         irker.handle('{"to":"%s","privmsg":"%s"}' % (
             args.immediate, args.message), quit_after=True)

irkerd.xml

@@ -185,9 +185,11 @@ authenticate the nick on receipt of a welcome message.</para></listitem>
 </varlistentry>
 <varlistentry>
 <term>-i</term>
-<listitem><para>Immediate mode, to be run in foreground. Takes two
-following values interpreted as a channel URL and a message
-string. Sends the message, then quits.</para></listitem>
+<listitem><para>Immediate mode, to be run in foreground. Takes a following
+following value interpreted as a channel URL. May take a second
+argument giving a message string; if the sedond argument is absent the
+message is read from standard input (and may contain newlines). 
+Sends the message, then quits.</para></listitem>
 </varlistentry>
 <varlistentry>
 <term>-V</term>