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From: flee@shire.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Why does 'fortune' write on the fortunes.dat file?
Message-ID: <FLEE.89Apr13101320@shire.cs.psu.edu>
Date: 13 Apr 89 14:13:20 GMT
References: <28776@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
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Organization: Penn State University Computer Science
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In-reply-to: haynes@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU's message of 13 Apr 89 05:01:31 GMT

"fortune" doesn't pick a random fortune to print.  Strange but true!
What it does is print the next fortune that fits your command-line
options.  The next fortune is determined by reading (and writing) a
counter in the fortunes.dat header.  The randomness is in the order of
the string table.
--
Felix Lee	flee@shire.cs.psu.edu	*!psuvax1!shire!flee