man > FORTUNE

FORTUNE(6)                              UNIX Reference Manual                             FORTUNE(6)

NAME
       fortune - print a random, hopefully interesting, adage

SYNOPSIS
       fortune [-acefilosuw] [-n length] [ -m pattern] [[n%] file/dir/all]

DESCRIPTION
       When  fortune  is  run with no arguments it prints out a random epigram. Epigrams are divided
       into several categories, where each category is sub-divided into those which are  potentially
       offensive and those which are not.

   Options
       The options are as follows:

       -a     Choose  from all lists of maxims, both offensive and not.  (See the -o option for more
              information on offensive fortunes.)

       -c     Show the cookie file from which the fortune came.

       -e     Consider all fortune files to be of equal  size  (see  discussion  below  on  multiple
              files).

       -f     Print out the list of files which would be searched, but don't print a fortune.

       -l     Long dictums only.  See -n on how ``long'' is defined in this sense.

       -m pattern
              Print  out  all fortunes which match the basic regular expression pattern.  The syntax
              of these expressions depends on how your system defines re_comp(3) or regcomp(3),  but
              it should nevertheless be similar to the syntax used in grep(1).

              The  fortunes  are  output  to standard output, while the names of the file from which
              each fortune comes are printed to standard error.  Either or both can  be  redirected;
              if  standard  output  is redirected to a file, the result is a valid fortunes database
              file.  If standard error is also redirected to this file, the result is  still  valid,
              but  there  will be ``bogus'' fortunes, i.e. the filenames themselves, in parentheses.
              This can be useful if you wish to remove the  gathered  matches  from  their  original
              files, since each filename-record will precede the records from the file it names.

       -n length
              Set the longest fortune length (in characters) considered to be ``short'' (the default
              is  160).  All fortunes longer than this are considered ``long''.  Be careful!  If you
              set the length too short and ask for short fortunes, or too  long  and  ask  for  long
              ones, fortune goes into a never-ending thrash loop.

       -o     Choose  only from potentially offensive aphorisms.  The -o option is ignored if a for‐
              tune directory is specified.

              Please, please, please request a potentially offensive fortune if and only if you  be‐
              lieve,  deep in your heart, that you are willing to be offended. (And that you'll just
              quit using -o rather than give us grief about it, okay?)

              ... let us keep in mind the basic governing philosophy of The  Brotherhood,  as  hand‐
              somely summarized in these words: we believe in healthy, hearty laughter -- at the ex‐
              pense of the whole human race, if needs be.  Needs be.
                     --H. Allen Smith, "Rude Jokes"

       -s     Short apothegms only.  See -n on which fortunes are considered ``short''.

       -i     Ignore case for -m patterns.

       -w     Wait before termination for an amount of time calculated from the number of characters
              in  the  message.  This is useful if it is executed as part of the logout procedure to
              guarantee that the message can be read before the screen is cleared.

       -u     Don't translate UTF-8 fortunes to the locale when searching or translating.

       The user may specify alternate sayings.  You can specify a specific file, a  directory  which
       contains  one or more files, or the special word all which says to use all the standard data‐
       bases.  Any of these may be preceded by a percentage, which is a number n between 0  and  100
       inclusive,  followed  by  a %.  If it is, there will be a n percent probability that an adage
       will be picked from that file or directory. If the percentages do not sum to 100,  and  there
       are  specifications  without  percentages,  the  remaining  percent will apply to those files
       and/or directories, in which case the probability of selecting from one of them will be based
       on their relative sizes.

       As an example, given two databases funny and not-funny, with funny twice as big (in number of
       fortunes, not raw file size), saying

              fortune funny not-funny

       will get you fortunes out of funny two-thirds of the time.  The command

              fortune 90% funny 10% not-funny

       will pick out 90% of its fortunes from funny (the ``10% not-funny'' is unnecessary, since 10%
       is all that's left).

       The -e option says to consider all files equal; thus

              fortune -e funny not-funny

       is equivalent to

              fortune 50% funny 50% not-funny


FILES
       Note: these are the defaults as defined at compile time.

       /usr/share/games/fortunes
              Directory for innoffensive fortunes.
       /usr/share/games/fortunes/off
              Directory for offensive fortunes.

       If a particular set of fortunes is particularly unwanted, there is an easy  solution:  delete
       the  associated .dat file.  This leaves the data intact, should the file later be wanted, but
       since fortune no longer finds the pointers file, it ignores the text file.

BUGS
       The supplied fortune databases have been attacked, in order  to  correct  orthographical  and
       grammatical errors, and particularly to reduce redundancy and repetition and redundancy.  But
       especially  to avoid repetitiousness.  This has not been a complete success.  In the process,
       some fortunes may also have been lost.

       The fortune databases are now divided into a larger number of smaller files,  some  organized
       by  format (poetry, definitions), and some by content (religion, politics).  There are paral‐
       lel files in the main directory and in the offensive files directory (e.g.,  fortunes/defini‐
       tions  and  fortunes/off/definitions).  Not all the potentially offensive fortunes are in the
       offensive fortunes files, nor are all the fortunes in the offensive files potentially  offen‐
       sive,  probably, though a strong attempt has been made to achieve greater consistency.  Also,
       a better division might be made.

       When passing files to fortune, directories must be specified by absolute pathnames, and file‐
       names  starting  with  a  dot   are   ignored.   See:   http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugre‐
       port.cgi?bug=241888

HISTORY
       This  version  of  fortune is based on the NetBSD fortune 1.4, but with a number of bug fixes
       and enhancements.

       The original fortune/strfile format used a single file; strfile read the text file  and  con‐
       verted  it  to  null-delimited  strings, which were stored after the table of pointers in the
       .dat file.  By NetBSD fortune 1.4, this had changed to two separate files: the .dat file  was
       only the header (the table of pointers, plus flags; see strfile.h), and the text strings were
       left  in  their  own file.  The potential problem with this is that text file and header file
       may get out of synch, but the advantage is that the text files can be easily  edited  without
       resorting  to  unstr,  and there is a potential savings in disk space (on the assumption that
       the sysadmin kept both .dat file with strings and the text file).

       Many of the enhancements made over the NetBSD version assumed a Linux system, and thus caused
       it to fail under other platforms, including BSD.  The source code has since  been  made  more
       generic,  and  currently works on SunOS 4.x as well as Linux, with support for more platforms
       expected in the future.  Note that some bugs were inadvertently discovered and  fixed  during
       this process.

       At  a  guess,  a great many people have worked on this program, many without leaving attribu‐
       tions.

SEE ALSO
       re_comp(3), regcomp(3), strfile(1), unstr(1)

BSD Experimental                        19 April 94 [May. 97]                             FORTUNE(6)