NAME    [Toc]    [Back]

     quiz - random knowledge tests

SYNOPSIS    [Toc]    [Back]

     quiz [-t] [-i file] [question answer]

DESCRIPTION    [Toc]    [Back]

     The quiz utility tests your knowledge of random  facts.   It
has a database
     of  subjects  from which you can choose.  With no arguments,
quiz displays
     the list of available subjects.

     The options are as follows:

     -t      Use tutorial mode, in which questions  are  repeated
later if you
             didn't  get them right the first time, and new questions are presented
 less frequently to help you learn  the  older
ones.

     -i      Specify an alternative index file.

     Subjects  are divided into categories.  You can pick any two
categories
     from the same subject.  quiz will  ask  questions  from  the
first category
     and  it expects answers from the second category.  For example, the command
 ``quiz victim killer'' asks  questions  which  are  the
names of victims,
  and expects you to answer with the cause of their untimely demise,
     whereas the command ``quiz killer victim'' works  the  other
way around.

     If  you  get  the answer wrong, quiz lets you try again.  To
see the right
     answer, enter a blank line.

Index and Data File Syntax    [Toc]    [Back]

     The index and data files have a similar  syntax.   Lines  in
them consist of
     several  categories separated by colons.  The categories are
regular expressions
 formed using the following meta-characters:

           pat|pat  alternative patterns
           {pat}    optional pattern
           [pat]    delimiters, as in pat[pat|pat]pat

     In an index file, each line represents a subject.  The first
category in
     each  subject  is the pathname of the data file for the subject.  The remaining
 categories are regular expressions for the titles of
each category
 in the subject.

     In  data  files, each line represents a question/answer set.
Each category
     is the information for the question/answer for that  category.

     The backslash character (``'') is used to quote syntactically significant
 characters, or at the end of a line to signify  that  a
continuation
     line follows.

     If  either  a question or its answer is empty, quiz will refrain from asking
 it.

FILES    [Toc]    [Back]

     /usr/share/games/quiz.db  The default index and data  files.

BUGS    [Toc]    [Back]

     quiz is pretty cynical about certain subjects.

OpenBSD      3.6                           May      31,      1993