Fortune

Introduction

fortunate is a stripped-down implementation of the classic BSD Unix fortune command. It combines the capabilities of the strfile command (which produces the fortune index file) and the fortunate command (which displays a random fortune). It reads the traditional fortunate program's text file format.

This repository contains a fortune cookie database. It contains more than 2,800 quotes collected by Brian M. Clapper since about 1990 or so.

Usage

When used as a command line tool:

Usage: fortunate [OPTIONS] [fortune_files ...]

Options:
-h, --help     show this help message and exit
-v, --verbose  when updating the index file, emit verbose messages
-u, --update   update the index file, instead of printing a fortune.
-V, --version  show version and exit.
-n NUM         number of fortune cookies to show

If you omit the fortune files/paths, fortunate looks at the FORTUNE_FILE environment variable. If that environment variable isn't set, fortunate looks in /usr/local/share/games/fortunes, otherwise, it aborts.

When used as a Python library:

from fortunate import Fortunate
generator = Fortunate('/path/to/fortunes')
print(generator())

Fortune Cookie File Format

A fortune cookie file is a text file full of quotes. The format is simple: The file consists of paragraphs separated by lines containing a single '%' character. For example:

A little caution outflanks a large cavalry.
    -- Bismarck
%
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software
systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart
projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are
those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great
designers. Consider Unix, APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface,
even Fortran; and contrast them with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and
MS-DOS.
    -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.
    -- John Barrymore

The Index File

For efficiency and speed, fortunate uses an index file to store the offsets and lengths of every fortune in the text fortune file. So, before you can use fortunate to read a random fortune, you have to generate the data file. With the traditional BSD fortunate program, you used the strfile(8) command to generate the index. With this fortune program, however, you the indexes are automatically generated in the user's home directory, inside ~/.fortunate.

You should run fortunate -u whenever you change the text fortune file(s), so a new index can be generated.

Generating a Random Fortune

You can generate a random fortune simply by running the fortunate utility with the path to your text fortunes file:

fortunate /path/to/fortunes

Differences

This version of fortunate does not provide some of the more advanced capabilities of the original BSD program. For instance, it lacks:

• the ability to mark offensive and inoffensive fortunes
• the ability to separate long and short quotes
• the ability to print all fortunes matching a regular expression

It does, however, provide the most important function: The ability to display a random quote from a set of quotes.

License and Copyright Info

This is free software, released under the following BSD-like license:

Copyright (c) 2018 German Mendez Bravo (Kronuz)
Copyright (c) 2008 Brian M. Clapper

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

- Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
    this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

- The end-user documentation included with the redistribution, if any,
    must include the following acknowlegement:

    This product includes software developed by Brian M. Clapper
    (bmc@clapper.org, http://www.clapper.org/bmc/). That software is
    copyright (c) 2008 Brian M. Clapper.

    Alternately, this acknowlegement may appear in the software itself, if
    and wherever such third-party acknowlegements normally appear.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS IS AND ANY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES,
INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL BRIAN M.
CLAPPER BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

This fortunes file database is provided under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For details, please see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.