12/03/2003
If you wish, you can subscribe to an announce list where I will announce new versions or important security information. This is an announce only list, you cannot post to it and your address will never be passed on to anyone else.

09/03/2003
You can now discuss anything related to bitchbot in the bitchbot forum. And yes, 1.0.3 is coming... "soon".

16/11/2001
I just noticed a small error in the config template. $statsmax should be $maxstats or your channel stats will come out empty. You can simply rename this or wait for a fix in 1.0.3 when I get around to consolidating some new features. If you got to this page (as some of you are) by clicking the link from a channel stats page, it would be nice if you could inform the bot owner about this bug so they can update their config.

10/11/2001
bitchbot 1.0.2 is out. Here are the main changes from 1.0.0:

• Config file is now 'bitch.conf' - note that when upgrading.
• Channel stats now fork to a "bitchlet" instead of locking up the bot. Exception: Operating systems that don't have a non-blocking waitpid function (eg Windows) are liable to block still.
• Much improved support for nicknames with regular expression metacharacters in them.
• New chanstats, top 5 kickers and victims. Also new HTML with CSS and HTML 4.01 compliance, much more efficient.
• Fixed channel stats not displaying some sections due to misparsing of the log file.
• Channel stats logfile rewritten. No longer human readable in order to speed up stats. If upgrading, please delete your old .log file to avoid confusing the new stats bitchlet.
• Changed the way channel stats user hash is generated (I finally learned how to use references :)) - should save a lot of memory when running stats. In theory.
• Upload of channel stats to remote FTP server using Net::FTP (requires libnet to be installed, see download page).
• Fixed some potential divide by zero crash errors when running a bot with no factoids.
• Fixed bitchmsgs sometimes becoming out of sync and sending to the wrong person. Also added limit to length and number of pending messages a user can have.
• A bunch more customisation for the bot owner, check bitch.conf for a ton of new options.
• Support for joining channels with mode +k (keyed) set.
• Much improved CTCP support, less open to abuse / bugs.
• UPS "Power Failing" signal will cause bitchbot to save and exit :)
• A SIGHUP (aka closing your terminal while the bot is still running interactively) will cause the bot to daemonize as opposed to exiting.
• New 'whois' command to regex search list of known hosts for a custom pattern.
• Slightly better startup 'console', makes it easier to find problems.
• Sample auto-restart scripts and an infobot-factpack importer now available on the download page.
• Much improved ignore/unignore, you can now specify an address in the form *!*@*, and the bot won't auto wildcard match on TLD's any more :)
• A bunch of other cleanups and fixes I saw as I was going along.

I recommend all users upgrade ASAP. Just download the new bitchbot-1.0.2.tar.gz (30k) and replace your bitch.pl with the one in the file. You will want to check the new bitch.conf.template too, for new config options you can put it into your existing config. Also you might want to check out the download page for links to libnet if you want to use the new stats upload feature. There was a bitchbot-1.0.1, but my site went down when it was released and I noticed a few nasty bugs, so 1.0.2 is really a fixed 1.0.1 in disguise :)

Bitchbot is a GPL'ed perl-based IRC bot that I coded mainly for #gloom on irc.edgeirc.net. The bot has a wide variety of useful and useless features, to name a few:

• factoids (bits of information about things)
• Game server query support for all popular FPS titles (using qstat, www.qstat.org)
• Message system for leaving short notes for people who are offline.
• Configurable access list to allow users to manipulate certain features.
• Channel operator commands (limited use; bitchbot wasn't designed to be a chanbot)
• Last seen nickname to find out when a user was last on the channel.
• Vote and poll on user defined topics.
• Channel statistics (if your server can handle the horrible memory leaks)
• Support for the cyborgizer and techifier toys from www.brunching.com.
• A ton of other stuff you'll find from looking at the command reference.

Once you have perl installed / working, you can head on over to the download area to get the latest release, as well as some optional downloads for increased functionality. For instructions on how to operate the bot once it's in your channel, check out the command reference.

Enjoy the bot! If you have any good ideas or bug reports, let me know (emails to ). Since the code is licensed under the GPL, feel free to make modifcations as you see fit. If you improve upon anything or add anything notably worthwhile, let me know and I might consider it for a future release.