FORTUNE(6) FORTUNE(6)
NAME
fortune - print a random, hopefully interesting, adage
SYNOPSIS
fortune [ -aefilosw ] [ -m pattern ] [ [ N% ] file/dir/all
]
DESCRIPTION
When fortune is run with no arguments it prints out a ran-
dom epigram. Epigrams are divided into several cate-
gories, where each category is subdivided into those which
are potentially offensive and those which are not. The
options are as follows:
-a Choose from all lists of maxims, both offensive and
not.
-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.
-m Print out all fortunes which match the regular
expression pattern. See regex(3) for a description
of patterns.
-o Choose only from potentially offensive aphorisms.
Please, please, please request a potentially offen-
sive fortune if and only if you believe, deep down
in your heart, that you are willing to be offended.
(And that if you are, you'll just quit using -o
rather than give us grief about it, okay?)
... let us keep in mind the basic governing philoso-
phy of The Brotherhood, as handsomely summarized in
these words: we believe in healthy, hearty laughter
-- at the expense of the whole human race, if needs
be. Needs be.
-- H. Allen Smith, "Rude Jokes"
-s Short apothegms only.
-i Ignore case for -m patterns.
-w Wait before termination for an amount of time cal-
culated from the number of characters in the mes-
sage. 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.
The user may specify alternate sayings. You can specify a
June 23, 1990 1
FORTUNE(6) FORTUNE(6)
specific file, a directory which contains one or more
files, or the special word all which says to use all the
standard databases. Any of these may be preceded by a
percentage, which is a number N between 0 and 100 inclu-
sive, followed by a % . If it is, there will be a N per-
cent 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 direc-
tories, 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, 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
is equivalent to
fortune 50% funny 50% not-funny
FILES
/usr/share/games/fortune
AUTHOR
Ken Arnold
SEE ALSO
regex(3), regcmp(3), strfile(8)
June 23, 1990 2