Editing Fortune (Unix) (section)

==Purpose==
One of the included fortunes, from the "goedel" collection of fortunes about <code>fortune</code> itself, sums up the purpose of the program:
<kbd>{{Poem quote|text=
Has anyone realized that the purpose of the fortune cookie program is to
defuse project tensions?  When did you ever see a cheerful cookie, a
non-cynical, or even an informative cookie?
        Perhaps inadvertently, we have a channel for our aggressions.  This
still begs the question of whether the cookie releases the pressure or only
serves to blunt the warning signs.

        Long live the revolution!
        Have a nice day.}}</kbd>
The original <code>fortune</code> program could be used for the more general task of picking up a random line from a plain-text file.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/rc.html|title=rc documentation|website=plan9.bell-labs.com|author=Tom Duff|quote=First, the program guesses a location (in <code>$lab</code>) using the <code>fortune</code> program to pick a random line from the location list.|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140908071208/http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/rc.html|archive-date=2014-09-08}}</ref> However, in most modern Unix systems <code>fortune</code> cannot be used this way, since they use an ad hoc file format for fortune files to allow multiline aphorisms.