quote -- command-line stock quote display

• Download it via FTP, or
• Download it via HTTP.

quote is free software, distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL); see the file COPYING (in the distribution) for details.

Recent News

June 22, 2000: (v0.04) Argh... I should do regression-testing. 0.04 re-fixes the bug fixed by 0.02.

June 21, 2000: (v0.03) Incorporated a fix from yasushi@cs.washington.edu to deal with Yahoo's new quote format (naturally, it broke while I was out of town, away from email...)

April 4, 2000: (v0.02) Added a fix to handle indices (e.g. ^IXIC) and stocks in foreign markets (e.g. NT.TO). Based on patches sent by Cenk Bilgen (cbilgen@ee.ryerson.ca) and Calvin White (whitecd@cadvision.com).

Related Work

• Yahoo! Finance -- the excellent, comprehensive, and easily navigable financial information site provided by Yahoo
• Perl Finance Modules -- the "Finance::" series of modules on CPAN provide all sorts of useful utilities if you're writing Perl scripts similar to quote. In particular, Finance::Quote.
• Finance::YahooQuote is another Perl module that retrieves quotes from Yahoo and gives a good description of how to reverse-engineer the format string. (Unfortunately I did not find this page until after I'd already reverse engineered it using more of a brute force method.)
• Stock-related entries on Freshmeat -- another useful list of software for displaying stock quotes and financial news, including programs for creating graphical stock tickers.

Man Page

quote(1)                    quote 0.05                   quote(1)


NAME
       quote - Command-line stock quote display

SYNOPSIS
       quote [-r ] <symbol1> [symbol2...]

DESCRIPTION

       quote is a very short and simple Perl script that retrieves
       stock quotes from Yahoo! Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com).
       It's a clean and fast command-line interface for getting
       snapshot stock market prices.  quote can be used to retrieve
       prices of U.S.  stocks (CSCO, DELL), non-U.S. stocks (NT.TO),
       and market indices (^DJI, ^IXIC).  Note that the ^ character is
       a shell meta-character and may need to be escaped or quoted.

       quote uses the Perl LWP module if available, or lynx otherwise
       (found in /usr/bin/lynx).

OPTIONS
       -r     Attempt to retrieve real-time quotes from Yahoo!
              Finance.  This is not supported for all stock symbols.

EXAMPLES
       Use of quote is very simple:

       % quote csco ibm dell nt.to '^ixic'
       CSCO: 55.19 -2.00 (-3.50%) on vol of 72.6M @4:00PM
       IBM: 119.12 -3.88 (-3.15%) on vol of 6.2M @4:52PM
       DELL: 33.62 -0.69 (-2.00%) on vol of 35.2M @4:00PM
       NT.TO: 95.50 -4.10 (-4.12%) on vol of 6.3M @4:58PM
       ^IXIC: 3689.10 -52.12 (-1.39%) @5:16PM

       You can also try to retrieve real-time quotes:

       % quote -r csco dell
       CSCO: 55.62 -1.56 (-2.73%) @7:58 PM
       DELL: 33.88 -0.44 (-1.28%) @7:39 PM

BUGS
       quote depends on the particular format that Yahoo! Finance uses
       for its web pages.  If Yahoo! changes its layout significantly,
       quote will break.

NOTES
       Quotes from Yahoo! Finance are delayed up to 20 minutes.

WARNING
       THIS PROGRAM IS TO BE USED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY
       AND IS NOT INTENDED FOR TRADING PURPOSES. The author shall
       not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or
       for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

AUTHOR
       Jeremy Elson <jelson@circlemud.org>

       The current version of this software is available at
              http://www.circlemud.org/~jelson/software/quote



quote 0.05              27 September 2000                       1

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