NAME¶
quiz
—
random knowledge tests
SYNOPSIS¶
quiz |
[ -t ]
[-i
file ]
[question
answer ] |
DESCRIPTION¶
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¶
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¶
- /usr/share/games/bsdgames/quiz
- The default index and data files.
BUGS¶
quiz
is pretty cynical about certain
subjects.