BSD Fortune
Created when Unix was young, fortune is the venerable BSD program that prints a random fortune to the standard output (usually the Terminal). Fortune is typically added to a shell login script (such as .login or .profile) so every time a new Terminal window opens a random fortune appears. The fortunes themselves come from an endless library of quotes, quips, sayings, anecdotes, and jokes from a wide variety of sources. Once installed simply enter the Terminal and type 'fortune' to receive a random quote. Includes tools and man pages to help you make your own fortunes.
This is the BSD fortune originally written by Ken Arnold.
Download Fortune 1.4 (Disk Image, 4.3 MB)
Follow the instructions in README.txt to install.
Options
These options change the way fortune behaves:
| Option | Action |
|---|---|
| -a | Choose from all databases, regardless of whether they are considered "offensive." |
| -e | Make the probability of choosing a fortune file equal to that of all other files. |
| -f | Print out a list of all fortune files that would be searched, but don't print a fortune. |
| -i | Ignore the case for -m patterns. |
| -l | Long dictums only. |
| -m [pattern] | Print all fortunes matching the regular expression [pattern] |
| -o | Choose only from "offensive" databases. |
| -s | Short apothegms only. |
| -w | Wait for a period of time before terminating; useful for situations in which a fortune needs to be read before the screen is cleared |
| [N%] file/dir/all | Specify one or more files or folders to be used as source, with an optional probability percentage for each. |