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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.