Provided by: fortune-mod_1.99.1-7.3build1_amd64 
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)