mIRCStats is a shareware ^[2] Internet Relay Chat (IRC) log file analysis and statistical visualization program developed by Mikko Auvinen. ^[3] The program reads log files of IRC conversations and generates HTML pages and graphics containing statistics about the channel in a format viewable in a web browser. ^[4] mIRCStats is capable of creating extensive statistics for fields such as number of words written by nickname, foul words, URLs, and many others. ^[4]

It was first released on May 8, 1998 and was originally developed to analyze mIRC log files. ^[5] It has since been extended to parse other IRC log file formats and now includes support for many common formats. ^[6] Support for additional IRC log file formats can be added by creating a customized configuration file for the parser. ^[7] mIRCStats supports rendering the statistical output in a wide variety of languages. ^[8] A customized language file may be created to allow the program to render output in additional languages. ^[9]

Features

mIRCStats can display hourly and weekly activity graphs, weekly stats graphs, monthly activity calendars, a most active days section, and includes a time zone adjustment option to compensate for the time zone of the timestamps used in the IRC log file. ^[10] It supports display of the most often used words, when they were last used, and who last used them. ^[10] mIRCStats also generates stats for words by time of day and day of the week and can display words that were only used during these periods of time. ^[10] It can also create a table of popular words that have been recently discovered by the program. ^[10]

The program can display line lengths and the nicks who write the longest lines, can display stats for nicks who are mentioned in the channel the most often, and can create a nickname relation map that can visually show who chats with whom. ^[10] It can assign and display properties for individual nicks such as city, country, gender, age, birthday, etc, connect multiple nicks as belonging to the same person, and supports wildcards and unlimited exclusion of nicks from the IRC log file to filter out undesired bots or individuals. ^[10]

mIRCStats can display the most recent and random channel topics. ^[10] It supports linking URLs in topics, quotes, and descriptions, and supports URL tracking and display of random, most recent, and most used URLs. ^[10] The program can be used to create custom pipe graphics and it allows for custom mode sign, channel operator, and voice status graphics. ^[10] It includes a built-in FTP client to upload the HTML and graphics files to the web server. ^[11] The program also supports automated birthday greetings in IRC channels via a DDE capable IRC client. ^[10]

mIRCStats can parse IRC log files in many different formats, ^[2] including Eggdrop, Half-Life server, HydraIRC, Ircle, Irssi, miau, Microsoft Chat, mIRC, psyBNC, Trillian, WinBot, XChat, and Xircon. ^[6] A customized parser configuration file can be created to support other IRC log formats. ^[7]

Statistical output can be rendered in a wide variety of languages, including Afrikaans, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish. ^[8] Support for other languages is possible with a customized language file. ^[9]

Limitations

mIRCStats is shareware but it is not time-limited, and will continue to function unregistered, ^[3] however, registration is required to enable many of its features. ^{[2] [10] [12]}

The parser requires that each IRC log file contain a line with a date. Any lines in the log file before the line containing the date are ignored. ^[13] Nicknames may not contain white space. ^[13] A maximum of 262140 lines can be saved into the daily channel history. ^[13] mIRCStats does not support mIRC color codes in the IRC log files and any log files that contain such color codes must be filtered to remove the color codes before they can be processed. ^[11]

Critical reception

mIRCStats has become one of the most popular IRC log statistical programs with Download.com reporting over 52,000 downloads since August 05, 1998. ^[14] This popularity has prompted the creation of numerous logging scripts and conversion programs to convert other IRC log file formats to the mIRC log file format for use with mIRCStats. Some of these include irclc (IRC Log Converter) which converts logs from the dIRC or Pirch IRC clients into the mIRC log file format, ^[15] mIRCLog, a sBNC add-on that creates log files for sBNC in the mIRC log file format, ^[16] mEL (mIRCStats Eggdrop Logger) ^[17] and egg2mirc ^[18] which create log files for the Eggdrop bot in the mIRC log file format. A "Timestamp Logs" option was added to mIRC version 5.51 to allow for timestamping of each entry in the log file to better support the mIRCStats program. ^[19] mIRCStats was used by Viant during a study on internet file sharing. ^[20]

Similar programs

Unlike many other IRC log analyzer programs such as pisg and IRCStats, mIRCStats is a native Windows application, ^{[2] [4]} although it may also be used under Wine on a Unix-like platform. ^[21] The pisg program is platform independent but because it is a Perl program it requires a Perl interpreter to run, ^[22] while IRCStats is designed for Unix-like platforms. ^[23]

References

External links

• Official website
• mIRCStats FAQ
• mIRCStats Forums

Category:Internet Relay Chat Category:Data visualization software Category:Data analysis software Category:Windows-only shareware