SOC (Son of Croc) is an IRC bot. It's being developed because the code for Darkbot is rather unmaintainable. Don't get me wrong, Darkbot is a very clever bot, and does what it does nicely. But it has some limitations. Notably being able to talk only on one network and one channel.

Croc was a hack of the Darkbot code base that I did back in 2004 that allowed it to do full MIRCStats compatible logging. Every time I wanted to change something, I got a headache looking at the code. Therefore Son of Croc was born.

Update: some people have cleaned up the Darkbot code base as of 2005, making it a little more readable. Perhaps they read this page? It still can only run on one network/chan, however.

Presently, SOC has most of the functionality that Darkbot has, with the exception of some of the helper commands, and the channel protection stuff. Additionally, it has a standalone console program that allows an operator (i.e., me) to take control of the bot and talk to channels as if the operator were the bot. This means that the bot is a fairly complete IRC client as well. The bot can join multiple networks and channels and log them (under different nicks and idents, if required). If you have a password, you can do some rudimentary control by /MSGing the bot from the same network it's on, and anyone can find out the bot's status.

SOC generally hangs out on Austnet in a number of channels, but if you just want to play with him a bit, he owns a chan called (unsurprisingly) #soc.

Check back for updates, as I am continually modifying the code. And the nicest thing is the code doesn't give me a headache when I look at it :)

Enhancement list:

Update 02-Oct-2008, Version X00-28

Update 10-Oct-2007, Version X00-27

Update 07-Mar-2007, Version X00-26

Random code trivia:

Update 26-Feb-2007, Version X00-25

Update 14-Feb-2007, Version X00-24

Update 19-Oct-2006, Version X00-23

Update 07-Jul-2006, Version X00-22

Update 01-Jul-2006, Version X00-21

Update 03-Nov-2005. Version X00-20.

Update 01-Aug-2005. Version X00-19.

This version has been out for quite a while, although I haven't managed to get here to update the page. Plus I kept tweaking the console interface to add little features. I finally decided that enough was enough. "Ship early, ship often" even if it's only to yourself.

Update 03-Apr-2005. Version X00-18.

Update 28-Mar-2005. Version X00-17.

Update 20-Mar-2005. Version X00-16.

Update 19-Mar-2005. Version X00-15.

Update 27-Feb-2005. Version X00-14.

Update 21-Feb-2005. Version X00-13.

Update 20-Feb-2005. Version X00-12.

Update 19-Feb-2005. Version X00-11.

Update 12-Feb-2005. Version X00-10.

Update 30-Jan-2005. Version X00-09.

Update 23-Jan-2005. Version X00-08.

Update 22-Jan-2005. Version X00-07.

Update 19-Jan-2005. Version X00-05. The bot now supports the following commands:

Normal commands:

Privileged commands (you need a password):

The language processing code has been completely rewritten. It's far more clean than the junk I originally threw together to get the bot running.