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Since the early days of geekdom we've been trying to find the inate machine intelligence in the hardware around us. It started with Eliza. Now there's a possibility that true smarts have always been in the UNIX shell.

Paul Barth writes:

Since we are all now great UNIX wizards, the follow might be humorous. It came to me from Umass.

Note that the '%' prompt indicates that the command should be issued from the C shell, and the '$' prompt indicates the Bourne shell.

[ ...some removed... ]

% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].

% ^How did the sex change^ operation go?
Modifier failed.

% If I had a ( for every $ Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many ('s.

% make love
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

% sleep with me
bad character

% got a light?
No match.

% man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.

% ^What is saccharine?
Bad substitute.

% (-
(-: Command not found.

% sh

$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!

$ drink bottle: cannot open
opener: not found