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)