petname -a --count N should produce names with different starting letters

[sshilovsky]

Command: petname --count 1000 -a | cut -c 1 | sort | uniq | wc -l

Produced result: 1

Expected result: anything but 1 pretty much every time

[allenap]

The -a / --alliterate flag finds first letters that are present in all word lists, picks one of those letters at random, then removes all words that don't begin with that letter, before carrying on as normal. As implemented right now, the answer from that command will always be 1 as you've discovered.

The use-case I originally had in mind for this was something like choosing a new Ubuntu release name, where you want lots of choices but with the first letters always the same. However, that's better handled with the newer -A / --alliterate-with flag, so I think you're right: -a / --alliterate should ensure a common first letter for components of each composed name. The restriction of having the same letter for the whole stream is excessive.

[allenap]

A workaround for now:

petname --stream | egrep '^(.).*-\1' | head -n 1000