Thread: Chat BOT

You might have more fun getting involved in a project at this site...

www.sourceforge.net

Open source community

and needs to be fully independent of the programmer while the user is runnng it.

...so no Wizard of Oz tricks, eh? Kinda rules out a lot of possibilities, but whatever

Here are some (implausible???) suggestions:

- Place all of the replies you think of in a single file, and place ID's next to them like so:

1 I'm sorry %s, I can't do that...
2 I love you %s...will you come a little closer to the monitor?
3 Wow, that is fascinating %s - did you think of that yourself?

- Place all of the possible input patterns you can think of in a separate file in all lowercase. Match them with the appropriate ID from the above file:

1 will you
2 thanks
3 i think
1 please

Using this method, you can constantly add to the program without recompilation.

- Finally, when the user types a string, convert it to lowercase, compare it to the second file data using strstr(), and if found, look up the appropriate response. If none is found, use a default like:

"I'm sorry, my English is quite bad -can you rephrase that please?"

It's difficult to tell you where to start, when we don't know how far along you are. I guess we have to assume that you know how to get use input and store it in a string. Basically I would imagine this sort of program would tokenise the string the user enters (Look at strtok). Then try to understand what the user is saying... Is the first part of the input "Who, What, Where, How, Why" etc ie, is the user asking a question.

Some repsonses would be fixed, and I'd guess the best way for the program to appear animate would be for it to ask the questions.

A typical conversation between User & Program might look like the following.

U "Hello",
P "Hi, I'm bob, what's you name?"
U "John"
P "Hello John, how is the weather today?"
U "The weather is pretty cloudy"
P (Splits string up and checks each word against a key word database, database says 'cloudy'="I wish it were fine, I like the sun" And there you have your response

The database can be as big as you like, and the key to the program improving would be a series of questions that help the programs' database grow.

I once saw a program that asked questions to identify animals. It started very simple and input would go like this.

P "How many legs does the animal have?"
U "2"
P "Is it a Person?"
U "No"
P "I give up, what is it?"
U "A bird"
P "What does a Bird have that a Human doesn't?"
U "Wings"
P "Thank you"
P "How many legs does the animal have?"
U "2"
P "Does the animal have Wings?"
U "Yes"
P "Is it a Bird?"

You get the idea, at the time (many years ago) I found this program very impressive, but the code for it would not be too hard.

Hope this helps

Hmm, sounds intriguing! Keep us posted

Ok, well, I did one. I hope you don't mind Anyway, it kind of fun! But I didn't teach him much...

I don't mind at all, having ideas to go off is awsome man!

>>keep us posted

no doubt!

edit//

Ok three questions:

1) How would i go about reading in the files?

2) Would there be a better way to check for comparisons then say an if statement?

3) howd u do the cool slow print text!?

You could check out a similar project I did about 4 years back. You can download it at:

http://www.generation5.org/projects/answer.shtml

At the time I was dissapointed with the results of my project (I had high expectations), but when I compare it now to other chat programs such as CAlice - it aint bad.

No source code, but I'm thinking about making everything I've ever done in this field free & available, and placing it all on my website. Will email you the source if you want.

howd u do the cool slow print text!?

Code:

void PrintMechanical(char *message, ...)
{
 int i, len = strlen(message);

 char buff[len + 256];

 va_list ptr;

 va_start(ptr, message);

 vsprintf(buff, message, ptr);

 len = strlen(buff);

 for(i = 0; i < len; i++){
 printf("%c", buff[i]);
 Sleep(5 + (i * 10));
 }
}

How would i go about reading in the files?

I just opened a file and counted the newlines, and the maximum string length of all lines. Then I declared an array like this:

char array[count][maxlen];

I used fgets() to read in the array...

Would there be a better way to check for comparisons then say an if statement?

What I did was to split each string in the "response" file, and used this simple loop:

for(count of response strings){

found = true;

for(count of words in this response string)
if one word is not found in input string:
then set found to false;

if found, return the index of the response string...
}

If you are going to make it have static replies, then add a feature for some sort of learning. Purely static chatbots are VERY boring and they have been around for some time now. Innovation is needed with chatbots. Fixed responses are the thing of the past. What I envision for chatbots is the next step in creating a true AI. You can create a nueral network that links words with common thoughts or even other words that relate, and connect these specific words with broader applications for these words or meanings, then using some means of English parsing your program can gain an understanding of what the user is asking and draw from itself a reply that will satisfy the user.

A program that will also say one thing, or maybe even a couple of things, when you input a certain string is a fruitless programming venture and should be avoided.