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25 responses total.

I didn't know about he "fortune" program.  How does it work?

If it uses the same format as the fortune program on my linux system,
the fortune data file has a header structure that's a table of offsets
for the various fortune strings.  This is to enable random access to
the strings.

There is a program called "strfile" that creates such a data file from
a plain ascii file containing the strings.  The program doesn't seem to
be on grex, and I don't have source, but I imagine it can be ftp'd from
somewhere.

(kami slipped in.  Type  !fortune  at the next prompt.)

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I've always tried to live by that prescription.

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Re-read my response #2.

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An archie search turned up gatekeeper.dec.com:
/contrib/src/dco/fortune/src/strfile.

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if you're still looking, popcorn, i *finally* got it compiled (thanx to remmers
for help) .... try !/u/orinoco/strfile to run it....

...just a few questions......one, what do you use as a delimiter between
strings, and two, how do you *run* the durn thing after you've changed your
file into 1's and 0's?

Ok, i'm back again, answering my own questions.
According to a comment in the uncompiled program, you use two consecutive
linesconsisting of just a % as a delimiter.   But i tried that, and it diedn't
work.  Rather, when I tried to run !fortune using my file, it just gave me the
whole file in one chunck, %'s and all.

What does strfile do?

(Valerie's conscientious about FWing, & I'm pretty sure she reads *everything*
here.)

I took a glance at that comment, & I think you've got it wrong.  The
delimiter is any line beginning with two %s, if I understand it.

yeah, what *does* strfile do?

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no, a line beginning w/two %'s doesn't work either.

Daniel, I tried compiling, setting up a test file, & running.  The
message from strfile appears to indicate that it did in fact use
lines beginning %% as delimiters (the string count & that "shortest string"
message fits this).  I tried running fortune on my file, & got the
results you report, though.  I suspect that fortune expects some kind
of format for the strings it uses, since its options include things like
"offensive fortunes only" etc., but I don't have any inside info.

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There seems to be just one, according to the man & according to what
seems to be in the games/lib dir - but the others could be hidden.
However, I really do think that this is likely given what happens.  I
could well be wrong.

Somewhere we must have the source for fortune, surely?  Not that *I*
want to go digging through it!

yeah..source file is /usr/local/grexsrc/strfile/strfile.c....compiled version
is /home/orinoco/strfile

Nope, Daniel, I meant the source for fortune.  I glanced through the source
for strfile, but I don't want to dig into it too much, either.

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