Infobot
Encyclopedia
Infobot is a Perl
IRC bot
, first written in 1995 by Kevin Lenzo
. The bot's main goal was to remember URLs
and associate them with a descriptive name, so whenever someone needed a specific URL they could ask the bot. For that reason, the first Infobot, running in #macintosh on the EFnet
IRC
network, had the nickname 'url'.
Although the main project is now inactive, many forks from the original program were made, some of which are still active. Most of these forks carry extra features, such as googling a phrase given through the chat and saying the results of the query as messages directly in the chat.
s. It stores information in its database by connecting a phrase with its definition, usually an informative short line. It records its information by constantly listening to the chat (which is configurable). It states its factoids when it recognizes a question in the chat. For example:
wikipedia is http://www.wikipedia.org/
The Infobot at this point silently remembers the statement
wikipedia?
somebody said wikipedia is http://www.wikipedia.org/
Because of its ability to store statements and re-state them with ease, many IRC channel operators use an Infobot to store information such as the channel rules so they could easily give them to newcomers to the channel.
Using its automated replies, Infobots are also often used as an entertainment bot, giving humorous replies to certain queries. For example, to prevent the Infobot from saying 'X is Y', the key word '' is used, to have this effect:
dumb bot is stupid human
infobot: what's up?
huh?
dumb bot
stupid human
A notable fork was blootbot by Tim Riker. In 2008 it was merged back with the original infobot. The resulting code is now maintained under the original infobot name by Riker. It uses an SQL
back-end such as MySQL
, PGSQL
, or SQLite
to store factoids.
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
IRC bot
IRC bot
thumb|409px|right|An IRC bot performing a simple task.An IRC bot is a set of scripts or an independent program that connects to Internet Relay Chat as a client, and so appears to other IRC users as another user...
, first written in 1995 by Kevin Lenzo
Kevin Lenzo
Kevin Lenzo is an American computer scientist. He wrote the initial infobot, founded The Perl Foundation and the Yet Another Perl Conferences , released CMU Sphinx into Open source, founded Cepstral LLC, and has been a major contributor to the Festival Speech Synthesis System, FestVox, and Flite...
. The bot's main goal was to remember URLs
Uniform Resource Locator
In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....
and associate them with a descriptive name, so whenever someone needed a specific URL they could ask the bot. For that reason, the first Infobot, running in #macintosh on the EFnet
EFnet
EFnet or Eris Free network is a major IRC network, with more than 35,000 users. It is the modern-day descendant of the original IRC network.- History :...
IRC
Internet Relay Chat
Internet Relay Chat is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfer, including file...
network, had the nickname 'url'.
Although the main project is now inactive, many forks from the original program were made, some of which are still active. Most of these forks carry extra features, such as googling a phrase given through the chat and saying the results of the query as messages directly in the chat.
Operation
The Infobot works by a method of factoidFactoid
A factoid is a questionable or spurious—unverified, incorrect, or fabricated—statement presented as a fact, but with no veracity. The word can also be used to describe a particularly insignificant or novel fact, in the absence of much relevant context...
s. It stores information in its database by connecting a phrase with its definition, usually an informative short line. It records its information by constantly listening to the chat (which is configurable). It states its factoids when it recognizes a question in the chat. For example:
The Infobot at this point silently remembers the statement
Because of its ability to store statements and re-state them with ease, many IRC channel operators use an Infobot to store information such as the channel rules so they could easily give them to newcomers to the channel.
Using its automated replies, Infobots are also often used as an entertainment bot, giving humorous replies to certain queries. For example, to prevent the Infobot from saying 'X is Y', the key word '
Derived bot projects
Infobots running the original Infobot code have become less popular on IRC now, mostly because of the inactivity of the original project. Newer Infobots have additional features. Most of them involve connecting to websites. For example, some bots have a 'weather' module. So someone can ask the Infobot the weather at a certain address, and the Infobot will connect to a weather site and report the up-to-date weather on the chat. Infobots are also useful as calculators, and in currency conversions, word definitions, and many other things which you would otherwise have to open a site for.A notable fork was blootbot by Tim Riker. In 2008 it was merged back with the original infobot. The resulting code is now maintained under the original infobot name by Riker. It uses an SQL
SQL
SQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems ....
back-end such as MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
, PGSQL
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...
, or SQLite
SQLite
SQLite is an ACID-compliant embedded relational database management system contained in a relatively small C programming library. The source code for SQLite is in the public domain and implements most of the SQL standard...
to store factoids.
External links
- infobot at SourceForge
- infobot.org - old site, unmaintained please see the SourceForgeSourceForgeSourceForge Enterprise Edition is a collaborative revision control and software development management system. It provides a front-end to a range of software development lifecycle services and integrates with a number of free software / open source software applications .While originally itself...
page for new information.