[plug] The meaning of life

[Jay Turner]

> % whatis 'the meaning of life'|wc -c
> 42
>
> Just FYI, alternative ("incorrect") responses are numerous. The "trick"
> works by counting the number of "characters" (letters & punctuation
> symbols) in the response to the whatis command. When the response is
> "the meaning of life: nothing appropriate." (as it is under Debian), the
> number of characters is 42. Some platforms might not have the trailing
> full stop, some platforms might return "the meaning of life: not found",
> and I know of at least one platform that produces no output (implying
> the meaning of life is zero!!). RedHat must be doing something else
> entirely, or it is just very verbose (such that the number of characters
> is 104).

RedHat 7.3:

[root at flanders root]# whatis "the meaning of life" | wc -c
    104
[root at flanders root]# whatis "the meaning of life"
the: nothing appropriate
meaning: nothing appropriate
of: nothing appropriate
life: nothing appropriate


I knew what the command was doing, I just didn't know why it was
clever/funny. I guess this is because it is an 'in joke'.
Hence my earlier response..