FISH(1)

📦 version 1.053, in alpine 3.24

🐟 FISH(1) — like, the actual manual page, bestie 🐟

okay so this is FISH(1) from the User Contributed Perl Documentation (yes, section 1 of the perl manpages, we love a legacy moment 💅). it's a whole manual page about a card game and honestly? it ate. let's get into it ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

fish — plays the children's game of Go Fish 🃏

like, that's it. that's the whole name section. iconic brevity, no notes 🫶

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

fish [-p]

that's the whole vibe check: you run fish, and optionally you add that one flag. periodt 💅

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so fish plays the children's game of Go Fish, bestie. the computer plays against you — it's you vs. the machine, main character energy vs. main character energy 🔥. the object of the game is to collect more "books" of cards than your opponent by querying each other's hand. that's the whole goal. more books = you win. fewer books = 😭.

and ngl, this version implements the child-friendly rules outlined in Hoyle's Rules of Games — so it's the wholesome, family-friendly ruleset, not some feral house-rules chaos. 🧚

🔧 OPTIONS 🔧

fish accepts, like, exactly one option (she's low-maintenance, we stan 🎀):

  • -p — puts fish into "professional mode". yes that's the actual name of the mode. she's got a job. she's got a 401k. she's playing Go Fish professionally 💼✨

💀 BUGS 💀

there are two, and they're both kind of a mood:

  • the strategy employed by fish's "professional mode" could be somewhat smarter. so like... the professional is not always giving professional. 🙈
  • user interaction resembles BSD's implementation, which is rather...spartan. yeah. spartan. that's the word they chose. no cap, it's the plainest-text-ass interface you've ever seen. 💀
fr fr, don't go in expecting graphics. you get text. that's the whole aesthetic. and honestly? respect.

👑 AUTHOR 👑

the Perl implementation of fish was written by Clinton Pierce, clintp@geeksalad.org. king behavior, we salute 🫡💜

this program is Copyright 1999, by Clinton Pierce.

it's freely redistributable under the Perl Artistic License — so go off, share it, redistribute it, it's all good 🎉✨

okay that's the whole page, bestie, you're officially a Go Fish expert now 🐟✨

🦋 cute little sign-off: this page ships with perl v5.42.2, dated 2026-02-15 — so if you're reading it, that's the version/date combo stamped on this bad boy. iykyk 💖🌸🎀
📦 where this page comes from