#straws

draw straws (v): To decide at random by drawing (selecting randomly between) straws, sticks, etc., one of which differs from the others (typically by being shorter), held in a person's hand so as to conceal which is the different one.

They drew straws to see who had to wash the dishes.

straws(1), in essence, is fortune(1) if it wasn't made by pricks. Also it's better to use anyway.

#(Non-)Features

• uses a STRAWSPATH environment variable, defaulting to /usr/share/straws
• -n option for picking the n-th string from a category - as such it can be used in scripts.
• supports subcategories in category/subcategory format
• doesn't have a flag for showing offensive entries, and creating racist or sexist straws files will incur an excruciating death in 3-5 years. This is truly the meaning of "to draw the short straw". To paraphrase the fortune(1) man page:

  Please, please, please create a bigoted straws category if and only if you believe, deep down in your heart, that you are willing to meet a terrible and painful end. (And that if you do, you'll just stay that way rather than give us grief about it, okay?)

#Installing

Requires scdoc to build the man pages, a Hare install, and possibly also haredo to automate the build.

#Contributing

Please send patches to autumnull@posteo.net