FreeBSD manual
download PDF document: fortune.6.pdf
FORTUNE(6) FreeBSD Games Manual FORTUNE(6)
NAME
fortune - print a random, hopefully interesting, adage
SYNOPSIS
fortune [-aDefilosw] [-m pattern] [[N%] file/directory/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
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. (See
the -o option for more information on offensive fortunes.)
-D Enable additional debugging output. Specify this option multiple
times for more verbose output. Only available if compiled with
-DDEBUG.
-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 do not
print a fortune.
-l Long dictums only.
-m pattern
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 offensive fortune if and
only if you believe, deep down in your heart, that you are
willing to be offended. (And that if you are not willing, you
will 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.
-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.
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
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 is 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
ENVIRONMENT
FORTUNE_PATH The search path for the data files. It is a colon-
separated list of directories in which fortune looks for
data files. If not set it will default to
/usr/share/games/fortune:/usr/local/share/games/fortune.
If none of the directories specified exist, it will print a
warning and exit.
FORTUNE_SAVESTATE
If set, fortune will save some state about what fortune it
was up to on disk.
FILES
/usr/share/games/fortune/* the fortunes databases (those files ending
"-o" contain the offensive fortunes)
EXIT STATUS
The fortune utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. In
particular, if -l, -m, or -s is specified, failure to find a matching
citation in the selected files counts as an error.
SEE ALSO
arc4random_uniform(3), regcomp(3), regex(3), strfile(8)
HISTORY
The fortune utility first appeared Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11 July 1, 2021 FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11