Peptalk is an oracle. Invoke it and it replies with quirky, absurd, incomprehensible suggestions. Sometimes you get ascii art, sometimes a lucky number or a tune. An obvious reference is the famous Oblique Strategies deck of cards by Eno and Schmidt.

Some phrases may have been borrowed from other sources, and usually altered in some way, but most is original content created by generative text procedures.



To compile:

cd PEPTALK/
gcc peptalk.c -o peptalk

Or use your favourite C compiler.

Please note that this software has been written by a non-programmer who is more competent in poetry than writing correct code. Beware of bugs hiding in dark corners. Segfaults do occur, although extremely rarely. The program has been tested on linux and will probably be fine on many other operating systems too, but there is no guarantee.


Usage:
The file book.txt should contain a list of words. Feel free to edit its content at any time. Abstract nouns might make most sense, but you decide what to put into it. At most 36 words will be used. No other files should be edited unless you intend to improve or modify the program.

Invoke with any number of arguments on the command line. Usually just ./peptalk is enough. There are no flags to access help or license messages or other options.

For best effect, avoid reading the source code to figure out what it does. Find out how the program reacts by using it every now and then. As always, there is no guarantee of usefulness and you are responsible for any consequences of using the program.

This is Peptalk version 1, a replacement for a previous unnumbered version released in December 2021. Numerous improvements and expansions have been made since the previous version.


Creative Commons Licence:
Peptalk by Risto Holopainen 2021-2022
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) 
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode


