infobot

chat A bot that serves as a common database of information

(often noteworthy URLs) for users on a chat system.

Infobots often have a simple chatbot interface, responding

to key-phrases, as well as to direct queries.

Here, in a real conversation, the bot Purl's first response is

triggered by the phrase "just tell me", and its second

response is triggered by being directly asked "perlfunc?":

eesh can someone tell me what: $num9 =

substr($number,9,1); means

Tkil eesh -- man perlfunc, look at "substr".

eesh just tell me

purl Didn't your momma ever tell you, "Go

look it up in the dictionary"?!

Tkil eesh -- no. that's all we'll tell

you. read the documentation.

Tkil eesh -- if you haven't man pages or

perldoc, you can read them on the 'net.

Tkil purl, perlfunc?

purl well, perlfunc is Perl builtin

functions, at man perlfunc or

http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local/doc/manual/html/pod/perlfunc.html

.

(1998-10-30)