Eliza Chatbot

Assignment 1
CISC 352: Artificial Intelligence
Sean Nesdoly
January 29th, 2017

I implemented the assignment using Python 2.7.8. As such, ensure that python is installed correctly and that the path to the python executable is contained within the system PATH variable.

Running the Eliza chatbot with input from a file

The text specifying the user input to the Eliza chatbot must be contained within a file named "human_script.txt" in the same directory that the eliza.py file is in. Each phrase in the file must be separated by the new-line character "\n".

To run the code on a unix environment with file input:

cd ~/path/to/NesdolyAssn1/
python eliza.py

Eliza will read the input phrases from the human_script.txt file line-by-line in a sequential order. For every line, Eliza will read, process and transform the string into a response to the user that is written to the standard output stream, along with its associated human input phrase (from file).

When reading from a file, the Eliza chatbot will terminate when one of the following conditions is true:

1. the string "quit" is given as a line in the human_script.txt file, or,
2. all lines in human_script.txt have been parsed

---

Running the Eliza chatbot in terminal-mode

Alternatively, the Eliza chatbot can be run in a terminal-mode. In this mode, user input is accepted from the standard input stream (stdin) instead of from a file.

To run the code on a unix environment in terminal-mode:

cd ~/path/to/NesdolyAssn1/
python eliza.py --terminal

Eliza will proceed to greet the user on the standard output stream with, "Hello. How are you feeling today?". The program will prompt the user for an input string on a new line. The conversation continues completely within the terminal environment, where user input is read, processed and fed back to the user in a "chatbot-like" style. To terminate the program in terminal-mode, simply input the string "quit".