Display Debian fortune quotes when starting up terminals

Jan 05, '04 09:17:00AM

Contributed by: avanham

Before Mac OS X, I used Debian Linux where every time I opened a new terminal window, it would display a short quote or literary reference. Sometimes they were funny, occasionally they were deep, and once in a while they were just plain dumb, but it was always entertaining to have them pop up.

Since there don't seem to be any Mac OS X ports available, I wrote a program, displayFortune (48KB download) which mimics Fortune. The quote databases are ripped right out of the Fortune archive on the Debian site, and the source is included. There's also a Read Me that explains how to use the program.

[robg adds: I tested the program, and it works as described ... and there are, indeed, some funny fortunes in the database.]

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