1FORTUNE(6) UNIX Reference Manual FORTUNE(6)
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6 fortune - print a random, hopefully interesting, adage
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9 fortune [-acefilsw] [-n length] [ -m pattern] [[n%] file/dir/all]
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12 When fortune is run with no arguments it prints out a random epigram.
13 Epigrams are divided into several categories.
14 Options
16 The options are as follows:
17 -a Choose from all lists of maxims.
19 -c Show the cookie file from which the fortune came.
21 -e Consider all fortune files to be of equal size (see discussion
23 below on multiple files).
24 -f Print out the list of files which would be searched, but don't
26 print a fortune.
27 -l Long dictums only. See -n on how ``long'' is defined in this
29 sense.
30 -m pattern
32 Print out all fortunes which match the basic regular expression
33 pattern. The syntax of these expressions depends on how your
34 system defines re_comp(3) or regcomp(3), but it should neverthe‐
35 less be similar to the syntax used in grep(1).
36 The fortunes are output to standard output, while the names of
38 the file from which each fortune comes are printed to standard
39 error. Either or both can be redirected; if standard output is
40 redirected to a file, the result is a valid fortunes database
41 file. If standard error is also redirected to this file, the
42 result is still valid, but there will be ``bogus'' fortunes,
43 i.e. the filenames themselves, in parentheses. This can be use‐
44 ful if you wish to remove the gathered matches from their origi‐
45 nal files, since each filename-record will precede the records
46 from the file it names.
47 -n length
49 Set the longest fortune length (in characters) considered to be
50 ``short'' (the default is 160). All fortunes longer than this
51 are considered ``long''. Be careful! If you set the length too
52 short and ask for short fortunes, or too long and ask for long
53 ones, fortune goes into a never-ending thrash loop.
54 -s Short apothegms only. See -n on which fortunes are considered
56 ``short''.
57 -i Ignore case for -m patterns.
59 -w Wait before termination for an amount of time calculated from
61 the number of characters in the message. This is useful if it
62 is executed as part of the logout procedure to guarantee that
63 the message can be read before the screen is cleared.
64 The user may specify alternate sayings. You can specify a specific
66 file, a directory which contains one or more files, or the special word
67 all which says to use all the standard databases. Any of these may be
68 preceded by a percentage, which is a number n between 0 and 100 inclu‐
69 sive, followed by a %. If it is, there will be a n percent probability
70 that an adage will be picked from that file or directory. If the per‐
71 centages do not sum to 100, and there are specifications without per‐
72 centages, the remaining percent will apply to those files and/or direc‐
73 tories, in which case the probability of selecting from one of them
74 will be based on their relative sizes.
75 As an example, given two databases funny and not-funny, with funny
77 twice as big (in number of fortunes, not raw file size), saying
78 fortune funny not-funny
80 will get you fortunes out of funny two-thirds of the time. The command
82 fortune 90% funny 10% not-funny
84 will pick out 90% of its fortunes from funny (the ``10% not-funny'' is
86 unnecessary, since 10% is all that's left).
87 The -e option says to consider all files equal; thus
89 fortune -e funny not-funny
91 is equivalent to
93 fortune 50% funny 50% not-funny
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98 Note: these are the defaults as defined at compile time.
99 /usr/share/games/fortune
101 Directory for fortunes.
102 If a particular set of fortunes is particularly unwanted, there is an
104 easy solution: delete the associated .dat file. This leaves the data
105 intact, should the file later be wanted, but since fortune no longer
106 finds the pointers file, it ignores the text file.
107
109 The supplied fortune databases have been attacked, in order to correct
110 orthographical and grammatical errors, and particularly to reduce
111 redundancy and repetition and redundancy. But especially to avoid rep‐
112 etitiousness. This has not been a complete success. In the process,
113 some fortunes may also have been lost.
114 The fortune databases are now divided into a larger number of smaller
116 files, some organized by format (poetry, definitions), and some by con‐
117 tent (religion, politics).
118
120 This version of fortune is based on the NetBSD fortune 1.4, but with a
121 number of bug fixes and enhancements.
122 The original fortune/strfile format used a single file; strfile read
124 the text file and converted it to null-delimited strings, which were
125 stored after the table of pointers in the .dat file. By NetBSD fortune
126 1.4, this had changed to two separate files: the .dat file was only the
127 header (the table of pointers, plus flags; see strfile.h), and the text
128 strings were left in their own file. The potential problem with this
129 is that text file and header file may get out of synch, but the advan‐
130 tage is that the text files can be easily edited without resorting to
131 unstr, and there is a potential savings in disk space (on the assump‐
132 tion that the sysadmin kept both .dat file with strings and the text
133 file).
134 Many of the enhancements made over the NetBSD version assumed a Linux
136 system, and thus caused it to fail under other platforms, including
137 BSD. The source code has since been made more generic, and currently
138 works on SunOS 4.x as well as Linux, with support for more platforms
139 expected in the future. Note that some bugs were inadvertently discov‐
140 ered and fixed during this process.
141 At a guess, a great many people have worked on this program, many with‐
143 out leaving attributions.
144
146 re_comp(3), regcomp(3), strfile(1), unstr(1)
147BSD Experimental 19 April 94 [May. 97] FORTUNE(6)