Online Computer Terms Dictionary - I

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)