Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Why is fortune writing to the fortunes.dat file?
Message-ID: <1723@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 31 May 89 18:11:25 GMT
References: <883@apctrc.UUCP> <730@dutrun.UUCP> <890@apctrc.UUCP>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 16

>They all break with 4.0.3.  Sigh.  Seems that someone didn't trust random()
>very much.

"fortune" antedates "random"; I think the "someone" is the
(aforementioned) Ken Arnold, and I'm told the reason why it does what it
does is that, in fact, he didn't like "rand()" (which is not, I think,
one of the best random number generators in the world).

>Don't look for an early fix.  Since it is a game (or is it?) it won't be
>a high priority problem.  An alternative would be to have fortune aliased
>to fortune with a file spec.

It's been mentioned to people at Berkeley, and will probably get fixed
at some point (however, since it's in "/usr/games", I don't know how
high-priority an item it is).  Sun, and other vendors, may pick that up
when it comes out, or may fix it themselves.