I’ve been using the Linkinus IRC client for Mac OS X a lot recently, and one of the things I dislike is needing to think up a different greeting every time I join a chat room (I hate using the same old greeting every time). Thankfully, Linkinus is easily scriptable, so without further ado, I give you the “/hello” command:

-- Script Name: hello
-- Version: 1.0
-- Description: Say "hello" in various interesting ways
-- Author: Ian Beck <https://beckism.com>

-- Usage: /hello folks!
-- Output: [Greeting] folks!
-- (can also use alone for just the greeting)

on linkinuscmd(name)
	-- Get a random item from the list of greetings
	set response to some item of {"Aloha", "Bonjour", "Ciào", "G'day", "Guten tag", "Hallo", "Hello", "Hey", "Hola", "Salaam", "Shalom"}
	
	-- Add the name, if we are using one
	if name is not equal to "" then
		set response to response & " " & name
	end if
	
	return response
end linkinuscmd

-- Changelog:
-- 1.0:
-- - Initial release

To install the command, pop open your favorite Applescript editor (like the free AppleScript Editor that comes with your computer, or Script Debugger if you’re all fancy-shmancy), paste in the code above, and save it as hello.scpt at this path:

~/Library/Application Support/Linkinus 2/Scripts/hello.scpt

The next time you launch Linkinus, you will be able to enter /hello with an optional name or similar, and it will output a random greeting followed by whatever you typed. So for instance, you type /hello folks! and what shows up in the chat room is “Aloha folks!” Or maybe “Hola folks!” Or possibly “Guten tag folks!” Or any number of other greetings.

If you want to use a different selection of greetings, you can modify the list on line 12 of the script.

Granted, figuring out a random greeting in Linkinus is probably not a problem most people have (“IRC? What on earth is that?”), but for those of you who are also annoyed by this repetitive task, enjoy!