GURU(8)GURU(8)NAMEguru - System administration
SYNOPSISguru [ -e program ] [ -f ] [ -p target ]
DESCRIPTIONguru 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 develop 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 exe‐
cutes 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 capa‐
bilities to generate a selection of screen editors, X widgets, compil‐
ers, sundry games and the occasional diatribe.
OPTIONS-e program
New features are added to an existing program. This option
should be used with caution as the enhanced program may behave
unpredictably or not at all.
-f Reconstructs filesystems after a crash.
-p target
Ports the entire system on which guru is executing to target,
preferably a RISC machine. This is an extremely time consuming
operation and is not guaranteed to terminate.
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 synthesising 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.
UNIX Programmer's ManualGURU(8)
