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37 .\" @(#)fortune.6 8.3 (Berkeley) 4/19/94
39 .\" This version of the man page has been modified heavily, like the
40 .\" program it documents. Some of the changes may be exclusive to
41 .\" Linux. Amy A. Lewis, September, 1995.
43 .\" Changes Copyright (c) 1997 Dennis L. Clark. All rights reserved.
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49 .TH FORTUNE 6 "19 April 94 [May. 97]" "BSD Experimental" "UNIX Reference Manual"
51 fortune \- print a random, hopefully interesting, adage
53 .BR fortune " [" -acefilosw "] [" -n
56 .IR pattern "] [[" n% "] " file/dir/all ]
60 is run with no arguments it prints out a random epigram. Epigrams are
61 divided into several categories, where each category is sub-divided
62 into those which are potentially offensive and those which are not.
64 The options are as follows:
67 Choose from all lists of maxims, both offensive and not. (See the
69 option for more information on offensive fortunes.)
72 Show the cookie file from which the fortune came.
75 Consider all fortune files to be of equal size (see discussion below
79 Print out the list of files which would be searched, but don't
83 Long dictums only. See
85 on how ``long'' is defined in this sense.
88 Print out all fortunes which match the basic regular expression
90 The syntax of these expressions depends on how your system defines
91 .BR re_comp "(3) or " regcomp (3),
92 but it should nevertheless be similar to the syntax used in
96 The fortunes are output to standard output, while the names of the file
97 from which each fortune comes are printed to standard error. Either or
98 both can be redirected; if standard output is redirected to a file, the
99 result is a valid fortunes database file. If standard error is
101 redirected to this file, the result is
103 .B but there will be ``bogus''
105 i.e. the filenames themselves, in parentheses. This can be useful if you
106 wish to remove the gathered matches from their original files, since each
107 filename-record will precede the records from the file it names.
111 Set the longest fortune length (in characters) considered to be
112 ``short'' (the default is 160). All fortunes longer than this are
113 considered ``long''. Be careful! If you set the length too short and
114 ask for short fortunes, or too long and ask for long ones, fortune goes
115 into a never-ending thrash loop.
118 Choose only from potentially offensive aphorisms. The -o option is
119 ignored if a fortune directory is specified.
121 .B Please, please, please request a potentially
122 .B offensive fortune if and only if
123 .B you believe, deep in your heart,
124 .B that you are willing to be
125 .B offended. (And that you'll just quit
126 .BR using " -o " rather
127 .B than give us grief about it,
131 \&... let us keep in mind the basic governing philosophy of The
132 Brotherhood, as handsomely summarized in these words: we believe in
133 healthy, hearty laughter -- at the expense of the whole human race, if
136 --H. Allen Smith, "Rude Jokes"
141 Short apothegms only. See
143 on which fortunes are considered ``short''.
151 Wait before termination for an amount of time calculated from the
152 number of characters in the message. This is useful if it is executed
153 as part of the logout procedure to guarantee that the message can be
154 read before the screen is cleared.
156 The user may specify alternate sayings. You can specify a specific
157 file, a directory which contains one or more files, or the special word
159 which says to use all the standard databases. Any of these may be
160 preceded by a percentage, which is a number
162 between 0 and 100 inclusive, followed by a
164 If it is, there will be a
166 percent probability that an adage will be picked from that file or
167 directory. If the percentages do not sum to 100, and there are
168 specifications without percentages, the remaining percent will apply
169 to those files and/or directories, in which case the probability of
170 selecting from one of them will be based on their relative sizes.
172 As an example, given two databases
173 .IR funny " and " not-funny ", with " funny
174 twice as big (in number of fortunes, not raw file size), saying
181 will get you fortunes out of
183 two-thirds of the time. The command
187 .RI "90% " funny " 10% " not-funny
190 will pick out 90% of its fortunes from
192 (the ``10% not-funny'' is unnecessary, since 10% is all that's left).
196 option says to consider all files equal; thus
207 .RI "50% " funny " 50% " not-funny
210 This fortune also supports the BSD method of appending ``-o'' to
211 database names to specify offensive fortunes. However this is
213 how fortune stores them: offensive fortunes are stored in a seperate
214 directory without the ``-o'' infix. A plain name (i.e., not a path to a
215 file or directory) that ends in ``-o'' will be assumed to be an
216 offensive database, and will have its suffix stripped off and be
217 searched in the offensive directory (even if the neither of the
219 options were specified). This feature is not only for
220 backwards-compatibility, but also to allow users to distinguish between
221 inoffensive and offensive databases of the same name.
223 For example, assuming there is a database named
225 in both the inoffensive and potentially offensive collections, then the
226 following command will select an inoffensive definition 90% of the time,
227 and a potentially offensive definition for the remaining 10%:
232 .I definitions definitions-o
235 Note: these are the defaults as defined at compile time.
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