Stop Nethack from generating or loading bones files on Linux

nethack

I prefer not to play with bones, so I tried setting OPTIONS=bones:no in my .nethackrc file. When I load nethack (the version compiled from source), it just tells me "Bad syntax in OPTIONS in .nethackrc: bones:no.", even though it worked when I put it in my defaults.nh file on Windows. All of my other options work properly, so it seems like this one is the only problematic one. I even tried using the nethack.alt.org git repository for the source code, and it still doesn't recognize the option. Is there an option I can set to do this on Linux?

Best Answer

bones is not an option for vanilla nethack.

It is an option, however, in the nethack.alt.org server, which make their source available via git on this repo, if it bothers you.

An alternative would be to reinstall nethack and/or revert any changes to nhdat made after each session of play, though this will also remove high scores, etc. If you kept a copy of the "default" or "clean" version in your home directory, for example, you could copy this over the updated version (containing bones, scores, all other data used in the game) each time your start the game.

Finally, you may un-define DLB during the compile (which is defaulted to on, IIRC) so that the files in /usr/lib/nethack are not concatenated as nhdat and will instead appear as files starting with bones in that directory and you can then remove them manually before or after each play-through.

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