NAME

       guru - System administration

SYNOPSIS

       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  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  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.

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 Manual                                                                                 GURU(8)