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Verbot V2.1.    #
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What is it?
Verbot is a conversational robot written in Perl 5. Verbot is easily
programmable to make it say whatever you want to with an intellegent
priority based response system.

Why?
Why not? Verbot is a VERY simple demonstration of the power of PERL. The
entire source code is right around 1k!

How do I use Verbot?
The most basic usage of Verbot would be to simply talk to he/she/it. On
any computer with perl installed just type perl verbot. Ask verbot any
question you want to. The chat file distributed with verbot is somewhat
limited, so some of it's responses might be less than intellegent. A more
advanced way to use verbot is to program your own responses. Simply open
up the chat file with your favorite text editor and you can begin adding
your own responses. For information on how to do this see the section
below on programming the verbot.

How do I program Verbot?
Programming the verbot is extremely simple. First open up the chat file in
a text editor. You should see a bunch of lines delimited by colons. The
number in front of the first colon is the priority. The priority
determines the chance that the verbot will respond with a particular
answer. After the priority comes the line number. It is important to keep
the line numbers in order, so make sure you begin editing at the bottom of
the text file. After that comes the keywords. These are delimited by
colons. Verbot works on a scoring system. For every word it finds in your
keywords, Verbot will add the amount specified by the priority to the
score for that line number. The line with the highest score will be the
response that verbot provides. Here's an example:

4:0:what:name:My name is Billy Bobbin
4:1:first:name:My first name is billy

If you typed in what is your name? The verbot would first read line 0 of
the chat file. It would see that there was a priority of 4 and would match
the words what and name from the phrase you typed in. These are both worth
4 points, so line 0 would have a grand total of 8 points. It would then
read line 1. On line one the verbot would match the word name but not the
word first. Therefore, line 1 would have a grand total of 4 points since
it only matched the word name. The verbot will always print the phrase
after the last colon.

What's the use?
Verbot is mainly intended as a novelty; however, with the addition of 2 or
3 lines, you can modify verbot to reside on your web page. You could
conceivably program verbot to respond to questions about your business or
have verbot as a novelty on your website. If you decide to use verbot on
your website, please display the message:
Verbot provided by http://www.atlantic.net/~whitton/verbot
If you feel that is too much to ask, then don't put verbot on your site.
If you need help modifying verbot to go onto your website, email me, and
I'll be happy to help you do this. Note: you must have cgi access to put
verbot on your website. If you don't know if you have this or not, ask
your system administrator.

What's been added since V2.2?
Ansi color (do you like this?), more word recognition, fixed a bug with
punctuation at the end of sentences.

I love verbot! How can I give you something back?
Verbot is officially free; however, if you feel like contributing to
encourage further development. I would be happy to receive donations of
money or computer equipment at:
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# Travis Whitton              #
# 603 NE 4th Ave              #
# Gainesville, Florida 32608  #
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