The Perl Infobot

Tim mentioned the Perl infobot in passing, subject of a great Perl Journal article many years ago. He wondered whether it was still operating. This is my response:

It's still running. The bot (called "purl") is programmed to recognize sentences like

• X is Y
• X has Y
• X does Y

When those sentences are encountered, they are stored in its database. Then when someone asks:

• X?
• what is X?
• who is X?

it replies with the Ys, joined by "or". It has different modes to stop it from being too chatty, and responds to "purl, go away!" (and variations).

Because it's not explicitly taught, it just picks up "facts" from sentences uttered around it, it ends up reflecting the mood of the group. For example:

-> *purl* gnat?
*purl* i heard gnat was njt by another name or aethers' bitch :) or a father
  as of 1999-08-10 @ 13.30 MDT or the GNOME version of nat or
  mailto:gnat@frii.com or a leader of the black-clad commandos of spin or
  Don't let him do the dishes or a nerd porn auteur or tang or okra or an evil
  slave driver (http://xrl.us/ibc) or 970 402 0397 or a junior international
  playboy
-> *purl* tim o'reilly?
*purl* tim o'reilly is going to take over the world. or to be played by
  Charlton Heston in the upcoming Perl Movie
-> *purl* what is o'reilly?
*purl* o'reilly is O'Reilly & Associates.  They publish really good technical
  books.  http://www.ora.com/
-> *purl* perl 6?
*purl* perl 6 is a fantasy
-> *purl* java?
*purl* java is, like, not good as erlang for telecom software or compile once,
  debug everywhere
-> *purl* c#?
*purl* well, c# is the bastard child of Perl and Java according to Simon
-> *purl* XML?
*purl* i heard xml was crap or the emperor's new clothes or CSV for the 21st
  century or see http://perl-xml.sourceforge.net/ but you probably want the
  FAQ at http://perl-xml.sourceforge.net/faq or brain damage or "If you don't
  need a Schema, you don't need XML!" or "...and if you do need a Schema,
  maybe you really only need RELAX NG" or a whole lotta extra crap bolted on
  to everything
-> *purl* web services?
*purl* web services is another thing like the internet 'cloud' on visio
  diagrams...noone really knows what it does or what its good for or reading
  my email over http by emulating imap
-> *purl* lwall?
*purl* somebody said lwall was the author of Perl: linguist, pragmatist, guru,
  follower and leader.  He's a nice guy too. or not coming to yapc or working
  on that
-> *purl* damian?
*purl* damian is doing a great job explaining OO from the ground up. or
  yetanother.org/damian or Q or <reply>RECTUS... DOMINUS...  or Source of Much
  Perl Amusement or our neverending font of creativity or teaching in bosten
  on jan 21-24

Notice how the least important info is often at the end--that's the last fact it learned, and will be regurgitated until someone sees that Damian's message is no longer relevant and says "purl, forget damian is teaching in bosten on jan 21-24".

There are a raft of additions plugged into purl--she did currency and temperature scale conversions before Google, for example. Here's a sample when I just joined:

<waltman> gnat!
> top o' the mornin' to yez
<waltman> purl, clock?
<purl> waltman: LAX: Wed 2:19pm PDT / NYC: Wed 5:19pm EDT / LON: Wed 10:19pm
  BST / HEL: Thu 12:19am EEST / IND: Thu 2:49am IST / TOK: Thu 6:19am JST /
  SYD: Thu 7:19am EST /

Walt wondered what time zone I was in that it was still morning so asked purl for a rundown.