fortune is a stripped-down implementation of the classic BSD Unix fortune command: It selects a random fortune cookie saying from a file and displays it on standard output.

Unlike the BSD fortune command (or my own Python version, at https://github.com/bmc/fortune), this version does not use an index file. We have loads of memory these days, and fortunes files aren't that big, so it's feasible to load the whole text file in memory, parse it on the fly, and randomly choose a resulting fortune.

This version is written in Go, mostly because, why not?

The easiest way to install this program is via the go command. Make sure your GOPATH is set to something, and ensure that $GOPATH/bin is in your PATH. Then:

go get github.com/bmc/fortune-go

A program called fortune-go will end up in your $GOPATH/bin directory.

fortune [/path/to/fortune/cookie/file]
fortune -h|--help

If you don't specify a fortune cookie file path (see below), fortune defaults to the contents of the FORTUNE_FILE environment variable. If neither the argument nor the FORTUNE_FILE variable is present, fortune aborts.

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

You're more than welcome to my fortune cookie file. It's over here: https://github.com/bmc/fortunes.

See the accompanying License file.