WUMP(1)

📦 version 1.053, in alpine 3.24

🌸 NAME 🌸

wump — play a game of "Hunt the Wumpus" 💅✨ and yes bestie, this is WUMP(1), a whole User Contributed Perl Documentation moment. Iconic.

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

wump

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Okay so literally: move around the tunnels and shoot the wumpus. Don't get eaten by the wumpus 😭, don't fall into a pit 💀, don't hit yourself with an arrow 🫶, and watch out for bats 🦇.

The game gives more instructions — Embedded documentation! Could this be a precursor to POD? 👀✨

📝 NOTES 📝

🐚 Perl Port 🐚

Because "Hunt the Wumpus" is one of the classics of early BASIC coding, I decided to stick as closely as possible to the original BASIC code. Slay. In this way, this program can serve not only as a fun way to while away the hours while waiting for batch jobs; but it can also be useful to teach the hordes of coders currently moving from 1970's BASIC to Perl. 💾🌈

I was mostly able to get a 1:1 correspondence between lines. You may notice that the Perl code is a bit longer, which I guess proves that BASIC is more powerful and concise 💀. The only places I cheated were to remove goto's (although I was sorely tempted to use a goto EXPR for the ON ... GOTOs).

Inputs are changed into upper case for your gaming convenience 🔠✨.

🦋 Miscellaneous 🦋

"Wumpus" can be found in the Jargon File. Some have gone so far as to say that this was the "first text adventure". In that case, I'm glad text adventures have developed since then 😭🙈.

💀 BUGS 💀

I have faithfully ported the lack of a "Quit" option. Also the spelling mistakes, and any bugs in the original. For example, you can shoot an arrow to go through rooms 1 2 2, which shouldn't be legal. But faithful porting means faithful porting 🫡✨.

Error message under -w 😭.

This program is copyright (C) Amir Karger 1999. (Although I can't imagine why 💀)

This program is free and open software. You may use, copy, modify, distribute and sell this program (and any modified variants) in any way you wish, provided you do not restrict others to do the same 🫶💖.

🌈 AUTHORS 🌈

Apparently, many of them. 💅

Some web sites claim this game was originally written by Gregory Yob, and published in Creative Computing Magazine in the September/October 1975 issue. The OpenBSD man pages say it was "People's Computer Company" in 1973. The BASIC code I used may or may not be the text that appeared in David Ahl's book "101 BASIC Computer Games".

Ported by Amir Karger karger@post.harvard.edu March, 1999 🎀

mwah 💋 this little rewrite is running on perl v5.42.2, dated 2026-02-15, and it's still the WUMP(1) manual — bye bestie, go shoot a wumpus (not yourself) 🫶✨

📦 where this page comes from