NAME

       robotfindskitten - help robot find kitten

SYNOPSIS

       robotfindskitten [ -n number ] [ -s seed ] [ -f filename ]

DESCRIPTION

       In  this  game, you are robot ( # ).  Your job is to find kitten. This task is complicated
       by the existence of various things which are not kitten (collectively known as Non  Kitten
       Items  or  NKIs).  Robot must touch items to determine if they are kitten or not. The game
       ends when robot finds kitten.

       You can move robot with the arrow keys, the EMACS keys (^N, ^P, ^B and ^F  for  down,  up,
       left  and  right),  the  keypad  keys  (all  8  directions),  and  the nethack keys (all 8
       directions; hjklyubn is left, down, up, right,  up-left,  up-right,  down-left  and  down-
       right).

       You  can  press  Ctrl-L  at  any time to redraw the screen. You can press q at any time to
       quit.  A good old-fashioned Ctrl-C quits too.

OPTIONS

       You can optionally specify the number of Non Kitten Items to use with the -s  option.  The
       default is 20.

       You  can  set the random-number seed, normally initialized from the system clock, with the
       -t option.  This may be useful for debugging.

       You can supply an arbitrary file from which to draw NKIs using the -f option.

FILES

       robotfindskitten(6)  reads   all   of   the   files   in   the   ~/.robotfindskitten   and
       /usr/share/games/robotfindskitten  directories.  Each  line  of  each  file matching *.nki
       becomes the description of a Non Kitten  Item.   Lines  beginning  with  '#'  or  '%'  are
       ignored.   This  allows comments to be used in nki files and allows fortune(6) files to be
       used.

ENVIRONMENT

       robotfindskitten(6) uses the HOME environment variable  to  find  the  ~/.robotfindskitten
       directory.

EXIT STATUS

       The  exit status is 0 if robot found kitten; 1 if you quit or there was a problem; and the
       signal number if robotfindskitten(6) exits gracefully due to a signal.

A FINAL THOUGHT

       Day and night I feverishly worked upon the machine,  creating  both  a  soul  which  could
       desire  its  goal,  and  a  body with which it could realize it.  Many who saw my creation
       called it an abomination, and denied me grant money. But they could not dissuade  me  from
       my  impossible  task.  It  was a spectre that tormented me always, a ghost I had to give a
       form and a life, lest it consume me from the inside. And when at last my  task  was  done,
       when  the  grey  box on wheels was complete and when it, as well as I, knew what had to be
       done, I felt deep sympathy for the machine. For I  had  not  destroyed  the  phantom,  but
       merely  exorcized  it  into  another  body.  The  robot  knew  not why this task had to be
       performed, for I could not imbue it with knowledge I did not myself  posess.  And  at  the
       same  time,  I felt a sweeping sense of relief sweep over me, that somehow, the dream that
       had driven me for my entire life had come one step closer to fruition.

       "Gort, Klaatu Verada Nikto"

       As I vocally activated the robot, I realized that it was following  my  instructions,  but
       not  out  of any desire to obey me. Had I remained silent, it would have performed exactly
       the same operations. We were two beings controlled by the same force now. And yet, seeking
       vainly  to  hold some illusion of control over the machine I thought I had created, I gave
       my final command.

       "GO!"  I told the box as it began to roll out  of  my  workshop  into  the  frozen  desert
       beyond. "FIND KITTEN!"

         -- The Book of Found Kittens, pages 43-4, author unknown

SEE ALSO

       robotfindskitten web page: http://robotfindskitten.org/
       sourceforge page:  http://sourceforge.net/projects/rfk/

AUTHORS

       robotfindskitten  was originally written by Leonard Richardson <leonardr@segfault.org> for
       DOS in 1997.  He rewrote it for Linux in  1999.   Since  then  robotfindskitten  has  been
       ported and/or rewritten for countless other platforms.  The current POSIX code is based on
       code originally written by Alexey Toptygin <alexeyt@freeshell.org>.

       The POSIX development team consists of:
       Alexey Toptygin
       David Griffith
       Eric S. Raymond
       Leonard Richardson
       George Moffitt
       Jake Berendes
       Lukas Eklund
       Neale Pickett
       Nick Moffitt
       Peter A. Peterson II
       Phil Ulrich (Mac OS X)
       Ryan Finnie (Debian Maintainer)
       Sean Neakums

                                         October 11, 2005                     ROBOTFINDSKITTEN(6)