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 fortune directory
              is specified.

              Please, please, please request a potentially offensive fortune if and only if you believe, 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  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.  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 databases.  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 parallel files  in  the  main
       directory and in the offensive files directory (e.g., fortunes/definitions 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 offensive, 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 filenames
       starting with a dot are ignored. See: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.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 converted 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 attributions.

SEE ALSO

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

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