NAME

fortune - print a random, hopefully interesting, adage

SYNOPSIS

fortune [-adefilosw] [-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. 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.)

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

     -f    Print out the list of files which would be searched, but do not
           print a fortune.

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

     -m I<pattern>
	   Print out all fortunes which match the regular expression pattern.
           See L<perlre(1)> for a description of patterns.

     -n I<length>
	   Set the longest fortune length (in characters) considered to be
	   ``short'' (the default is 160). All fortunes longer than this
	   are considered ``long''. If you set the length too short and
	   ask for short fortunes, or too long and ask for long ones,
	   you will get an error.

     -o    Choose only from potentially offensive aphorisms.  Please, please,
           please request a potentially offensive fortune if and only if you
           believe, deep down in your heart, that you are willing to be of-
           fended.  (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 philosophy of The
                 Brotherhood, as handsomely summarized in these words: we be-
                 lieve 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 exe-
           cuted 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 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 pre-
     ceded 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 re-
     maining 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, 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 con-
     sider all files equal; thus

           fortune -e

     is equivalent to

           fortune 50% funny 50% not-funny

FILES

fortune readme ./fortunes ./fortunes/fortunes1 ./fortunes/fortunes2-o ./fortunes/fortunes2 ./fortunes/limerick ./fortunes/lwall ./fortunes/startrek ./fortunes/zippy

BUGS

Currently there is no installer and the fortunes listed above are not included. Because of this, fortune might not find any files unless you specify them on the command line.

TO DO

Bundle files and possibly make an installer.

REVISION HISTORY

Revision 2.1 2006/01/16 mike ciul
Enabled a lot of options
Fixed known bugs
Added -n option

Revision 1.0.1 1999/06/07 andy murren
Small fixes and code clean up
FindBin now helps locate the directory of fortunes
Will search multiple files for a match
Dumped the -g option I tried in the original

Revision 1.0 1999/04/01 andy murren
Inital Revision

AUTHOR

This Perl implmentation of fortune was written by Andy Murren, andy@murren.org.

COPYRIGHT and LICENSE

This program is covered by the GNU Public License (GPL). See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html for complete detail of the license.