IRC Hacks (Paperback)

by Paul Mutton (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
IRC ( Internet Relay Chat) may very well turn out to be the world's most successful hack. In 1988, Jarkko Oikarinen wrote the original IRC program at the University of Oulu, Finland. As he says in his forward, IRC started as one summer trainee's programming exercise. A hack grew into a software development project that hundreds of people participated in, and then became a worldwide environment where tens of thousands of people now spend time with each other. I have found many of my friends through IRC and learnt a significant part of my present software engineering knowledge while using and working with IRC. That would not have been possible without learning from code examples and hacks from others.

IRC has continued to grow in popularity since its inception. Millions of people from all over the world now use IRC to chat with friends, discuss projects and collaborate on research. With a simple, clearly defined protocol, IRC has become one of the most accessible chat environments, with clients written for a multitude of operating systems. And IRC is more than just a simple chat system it is a network of intercommunicating servers, allowing thousands of clients to connect from anywhere in the world using the IRC protocol.

While IRC is easy to get into and many people are happy to use it without being aware of what s happening under the hood, there are those who hunger for more knowledge, and this book is for them. IRC Hacks is a collection of tips and tools that cover just about everything you'd need to become a true IRC master, featuring contributions from some of the most renowned IRC hackers, many of whom collaborated on IRC, grouping together to form the channel #irchacks on the freenode IRC network (irc.freenode.net).

Like all of our Hacks books, there are many different ways to use IRC Hacks. You can read the book from cover to cover, but you might be better served by picking an interesting item from the table of contents and just diving in.

If you're relatively new to IRC, you should considering starting with a few hacks from each progressive chapter. Chapter 1 starts you off by showing you how to connect to IRC, while Chapter 2 acquaints you with the everyday concepts you'll need to use IRC effectively. Chapter 3 is all about users and channels, and introduces the first pieces of code. Chapter 4 shows you how to make useful enhancements to IRC clients.

Chapter 5 is where you will learn the basics about creating IRC bots, with Chapters 6-12 introducing more complex bots that can be used for logging, servicing communities, searching, announcing, networking, managing channels or simply for having fun. Chapter 13 delves into the IRC protocol in more detail, and Chapter 14 demonstrates some interesting alternative methods for connecting to IRC. Finally, Chapter 15 will move you on to new pastures by showing you how to set up your own IRC server.

This book presents an opportunity to learn how IRC works and how to make best use of some of the features that have made it the most successful, most scalable, and most mature chat system on this planet. IRC Hacks delves deep into the possibilities.

About the Author
Paul Mutton is the author of the popular PircBot IRC framework. Developing this and several IRC bots has given him hands on experience with the IRC protocol and led to his interesting research on inferring social networks between IRC users.

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc. (July 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 059600687X
• ISBN-13: 978-0596006877
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #773,561 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This item is part of The O'Reilly Hacks Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book for IRC bot developers, September 1, 2004

By	Richard Bejtlich "TaoSecurity.com" (Metro Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

'IRC Hacks' is not a more recent version of Alex Charalabidis's 'The Book of IRC.' Published by No Starch Press in 2000, 'The Book of IRC' focuses on more introductory material, and thoroughly covers the issues facing most IRC users. Unlike the older No Starch book, 'IRC Hacks' devotes over 200 pages to bot development. In other words, the 'IRC Hacks' authors concentrate on more advanced ways to interact with IRC servers. If this is your primary interest, you will enjoy 'IRC Hacks.'

Since I am not interested in bot development, 'IRC Hacks' wasn't as useful to me as I had hoped. I enjoyed on chapters discussing the IRC protocol (ch. 13) and setting up an IRC server (ch. 15). Hacks about NickServ (#8) and ChanServ (#9) were interesting, and I may try the CtrlProxy hack (#93) to facilitate remote IRC access.

'IRC Hacks' is fairly well written, although the editor should have ensured that terms were explained when first mentioned. For example, CTCP appears on pages 10 and 48, with no expansion of the acronym or reference to hack #85 (which explains CTCP). This is often a problem with books by teams of contributors. I would have enjoyed more coverage of 'operational issues,' like problems associated with running an IRC server. IRC networks have been targets of denial of service attacks and other adversarial activity for years, and the means by which IRC operators defend themselves would make good reading.

If you need a book focused on bot development, give 'IRC Hacks' a try. If you're more interested in IRC as a user, or even as an operator, ask Alex Charalabidis to write a second edition of 'The Book of IRC.'

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Social networking on IRC?!, September 8, 2004

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Four years before the Web burst onto the scene with Mosaic, there was IRC. At first, IRC was mostly for bulletin board users. But as the Web took off, it also greatly expanded the pool of users and the extent of the Internet's physical reach. Now Mutton shows how today's IRC has so much more than that 1988 version. Being able to format messages, or colour them. Hey, you can even send and get sounds, in various common sound formats like wav files.

Numerous of his hacks revolve around managing an IRC channel. Problems of success, really. As IRC usage soared, what were once small communities of shared interests and values now often have to contend with others with different values. Channel operators may want to check out what Mutton offers.

Perhaps the most intriguing hack concerns finding social networks from many channels. Neat possibilities. Social networks are quite hot these days, though no one has yet found a viable business model centred on them.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 100 Useful Hints and Tips, September 24, 2004

By	John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Like all of the O'Reilly Hack books, this one contains 100 quick and dirty hints, tips and suggestions you might try on the IRC network. Although I consider myself an expert in some of the areas in which they have done their Hacks books, I have never failed to find a few things that fit exactly with something that I needed to do. In fact, I find that I need to go re-read the books once in a while just to see what new ideas I can find.

This particular book is interesting in that it is suitable for both the beginning and sophisticated user. It starts with getting an IRC client, using it, modifying it - in general getting the most out of it. Then it goes on to writing IRC bots using Perl, Java and Python along with canned libraries that simplify the writing of autonomous agents.