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# Fortune

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fortune is a simple program that displays random poignant, inspirational, silly or snide phrases from a database of quotations. The fortune command-line utility is part of the fortune-mod package.

## Installation

Install fortune-mod. Alternatively install misfortune, a fortune-mod clone written in haskell.

The fortune-mod package in official Arch Linux repositories doesn't include offensive fortunes but you can get offensive content enabled, if you install the alternative fortune-mod-offAUR build from the AUR.

Tip Meta packages which provide quotes from specific sources are available in the AUR under the prefix "fortune-mod-". For example, fortune-mod-archlinuxAUR contains Arch-related quotes.

## Usage

Command-line in a terminal:

    $ fortune
    It is Texas law that when two trains meet each other at a railroad crossing,
    each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed until the other has gone.

To display a random quote when launching an interactive terminal, add the fortune command to the rc configuration file of your preferred shell, for example:

    ~/.bashrc

    #!/bin/bash
    fortune

Note fortune displays quotes and phrases deemed by its maintainer to be non-offensive. Aphorisms can be enabled as a mix of offensive/non-offensive or as potentially offensive output only. See fortune(6) for more information.

### Creating custom files

In order to create a custom file, you must first create a file containing the quotes. Between each quote you must add a line containing only the `%` character. Save this file using whatever name you want, for example myquotes. Then, run `strfile myquotes` in a terminal, in order to enable random access of the quotes. You can now access the quotes by executing `fortune myquotes` in a terminal. For this command to work you must be on the same directory as the `myquotes` and `myquotes.dat` files. If you want your quotes to be accessible by just running the `fortune` command, you must move both files into the `/usr/share/fortune/` directory. If you want to make any changes to your file, repeat from the start.

### Cowsay

See ASCII art#Cowsay.

### Ponysay

See ASCII art#Ponysay.

## See also

- fortune-mod GitHub project page

Category:

- Eye candy

Fortune
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