1FORTUNE(6) UNIX Reference Manual FORTUNE(6)
2
6 fortune - print a random, hopefully interesting, adage
7
10 fortune [-acefilosw]
13 [-n length]
14 [-m pattern]
15 [[n%] file/dir/all]
16
19 When fortune is run with no arguments it prints out a random epigram.
20 Epigrams are divided into several categories.
21 Options
24 The options are as follows:
25 -a
28 Choose from all lists of maxims.
30 -c
33 Show the cookie file from which the fortune came.
35 -e
38 Consider all fortune files to be of equal size (see discussion
40 below on multiple files).
41 -f
44 Print out the list of files which would be searched, but don't
46 print a fortune.
47 -l
50 Long dictums only. See -n on how “long” is defined in this sense.
52 -m pattern
55 Print out all fortunes which match the basic regular expression
57 pattern. The syntax of these expressions depends on how your system
58 defines re_comp(3) or regcomp(3), but it should nevertheless be
59 similar to the syntax used in grep(1).
60 The fortunes are output to standard output, while the names of the
62 file from which each fortune comes are printed to standard error.
63 Either or both can be redirected; if standard output is redirected
64 to a file, the result is a valid fortunes database file. If
65 standard error is also redirected to this file, the result is still
66 valid, but there will be “bogus” fortunes, i.e. the filenames
67 themselves, in parentheses. This can be useful if you wish to
68 remove the gathered matches from their original files, since each
69 filename-record will precede the records from the file it names.
70 -n length
73 Set the longest fortune length (in characters) considered to be
75 “short” (the default is 160). All fortunes longer than this are
76 considered “long”. Be careful! If you set the length too short and
77 ask for short fortunes, or too long and ask for long ones, fortune
78 goes into a never-ending thrash loop.
79 -s
83 Short apothegms only. See -n on which fortunes are considered
85 “short”.
86 -i
89 Ignore case for -m patterns.
91 -w
94 Wait before termination for an amount of time calculated from the
96 number of characters in the message. This is useful if it is
97 executed as part of the logout procedure to guarantee that the
98 message can be read before the screen is cleared.
99 The user may specify alternate sayings. You can specify a specific
103 file, a directory which contains one or more files, or the special word
104 all which says to use all the standard databases. Any of these may be
105 preceded by a percentage, which is a number n between 0 and 100
106 inclusive, followed by a %. If it is, there will be a n percent
107 probability that an adage will be picked from that file or directory.
108 If the percentages do not sum to 100, and there are specifications
109 without percentages, the remaining percent will apply to those files
110 and/or directories, in which case the probability of selecting from one
111 of them will be based on their relative sizes.
112 As an example, given two databases funny and not-funny, with funny
115 twice as big (in number of fortunes, not raw file size), saying
116 fortune funny not-funny
119 will get you fortunes out of funny two-thirds of the time. The command
122 fortune 90% funny 10% not-funny
125 will pick out 90% of its fortunes from funny (the “10% not-funny” is
128 unnecessary, since 10% is all that's left).
129 The -e option says to consider all files equal; thus
132 fortune -e funny not-funny
135 is equivalent to
138 fortune 50% funny 50% not-funny
141
144 Note: these are the defaults as defined at compile time.
145 /usr/share/games/fortune Directory for innoffensive fortunes.
148 If a particular set of fortunes is particularly unwanted, there is an
151 easy solution: delete the associated .dat file. This leaves the data
152 intact, should the file later be wanted, but since fortune no longer
153 finds the pointers file, it ignores the text file.
154
157 The supplied fortune databases have been attacked, in order to correct
158 orthographical and grammatical errors, and particularly to reduce
159 redundancy and repetition and redundancy. But especially to avoid
160 repetitiousness. This has not been a complete success. In the process,
161 some fortunes may also have been lost.
162 The fortune databases are now divided into a larger number of smaller
165 files, some organized by format (poetry, definitions), and some by
166 content (religion, politics).
167
170 This version of fortune is based on the NetBSD fortune 1.4, but with a
171 number of bug fixes and enhancements.
172 The original fortune/strfile format used a single file; strfile read
175 the text file and converted it to null-delimited strings, which were
176 stored after the table of pointers in the .dat file. By NetBSD fortune
177 1.4, this had changed to two separate files: the .dat file was only the
178 header (the table of pointers, plus flags; see strfile.h), and the text
179 strings were left in their own file. The potential problem with this is
180 that text file and header file may get out of synch, but the advantage
181 is that the text files can be easily edited without resorting to unstr,
182 and there is a potential savings in disk space (on the assumption that
183 the sysadmin kept both .dat file with strings and the text file).
184 Many of the enhancements made over the NetBSD version assumed a Linux
187 system, and thus caused it to fail under other platforms, including
188 BSD. The source code has since been made more generic, and currently
189 works on SunOS 4.x as well as Linux, with support for more platforms
190 expected in the future. Note that some bugs were inadvertently
191 discovered and fixed during this process.
192 At a guess, a great many people have worked on this program, many
195 without leaving attributions.
196
199 re_comp(3), regcomp(3), strfile(1), unstr(1)
200BSD Experimental 19 April 94 [May. 97] FORTUNE(6)