Find RFCs based on Alpha (app.net) user ids.

adn2rfc.rb

require 'net/http'

def adn2rfc(user)
  abort "You need to specify user on app.net" if user.nil?

  http = Net::HTTP.new('alpha.app.net', 443)
  http.use_ssl = true

  res = http.request_get("/#{user}")

  if res.code == "200"
    rfc = res.body.match(/title="User Id (\d+)"/)[1]
    res = Net::HTTP.new('www.faqs.org', 80).request_get("/rfcs/rfc#{rfc}.html")
    res.code == "200" ? res.body.match(/h1>(.+)<\/h1/)[1] : "No RFC #{rfc}"
  else
    "No user with that name on Alpha"
  end
end

puts adn2rfc ARGV[0]

Examples:

$ ruby adn2rfc.rb phuu
RFC 1022 - High-level Entity Management Protocol (HEMP)

$ ruby adn2rfc.rb hxf148
RFC 860 - Telnet Timing Mark Option

$ ruby adn2rfc.rb marco
RFC 384 - Official site idents for organizations in the ARPA Net

$ ruby adn2rfc.rb ralf
RFC 1694 - Definitions of Managed Objects for SMDS Interfaces us

An error message is shown if no RFC was found:

$ ruby adn2rfc.rb sevvie
No RFC 8377