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GURU command man page

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From: [email protected] (Thomas Koenig)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: guru(M)
Date: 14 Apr 1994 14:59:48 GMT
Organization: University of Karlsruhe, Germany
Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Just found this... thought it was worth a repost ;-)

GURU(M) SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION GURU(M)

Syntax

guru [ -e program ] [ -f ] [ -p target ]

Description

guru is a sophisticated program synthesis and system maintenance tool developed after midnight in numerous university computing labs. It is based on the famous LISP Hacker system, used to develope AI programs on TENEX. guru reads a problem description from the standard input. An innovative and occasionally correct solution is generated and written to the standard output. Typically, guru is invoked repeatedly until an acceptable solution is generated or the user community has learned to live with the problem.

The bugreport mechanism sometimes invokes guru. In this case guru executes at a priority inversely proportional to the reported urgency of the bug. Feature enhancements run at high priority whereas critical problems are fixed only when the machine would otherwise be idle.

If the standard input is empty, guru uses its program synthesis capabilities to generate a selection of screen editors, X widgets, compilers, sundry games and the occasional diatribe.

The options include:

If more than one option is specified, guru may thrash. Each copy of guru has its own set of unique, additional and undocumented options.

See also

YAPS: Yet another Program Synthesiser by S C Johnson.

Notes

Inherent design limitations prevent guru from synthesizing comments. The programs generated are undocumented. The lucidity, politeness, relevance and language of the occasional diatribe vary considerably.

The only diagnostic is an occasional "I deserve a raise" which may be ignored albeit doing so may provoke "I resign'' - an unrecoverable error.

Sending the output of one guru into another can produce quite startling results.

--
Thomas Koenig, [email protected], [email protected],
The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double
logarithmic diagram.



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