quotes

Quotes script thingie

tl;dr

This is an extremely simple script which prints out a random quote from a custom formatted file.

About

I've been using this for a few years already and decided to write it out properly. At first I've written multiple variants of it to experiment with different programming languages from bash (very poor quality bash), to rust (also very poor quality rust) and golang.

I decided to rewrite it properly and used shell to better grasp the differences between it and bash (and also claim that it's more portable). I also introduced a properly defined format for the quotes file, as this was also rather random and undefined.

File Format

The input file should be formatted as follows:

• All quotes start with 'q:' and span a whole line
• All quote lines are (optionally) followed by an author line
• All author lines start with 'a:'
• All other lines are ignored

File format example

this line is ignored
q:dogs have no idea what's going on and I am so gealous of them

also this line is ignored. also above is a quote without an author
below is a quote with an author

q:In order to win, you mustn't lose.
a:Rambo Amadeus

Example output (for file above)

In order to win, you mustn't lose.
- Rambo Amadeus

Example usage

This is how I've been using it: random_quote -f $QUOTES_PATH | cowsay -f tux | lolcat -F 0.2 -t

Requirements

• cowsay (for cow)
• lolcat (for rainbow)

Use as you desire.