| cowsay | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Original author | Tony Monroe |
| Initial release | 1999 |
| Stable release | |
| Written in | Perl |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Available in | English |
| License | Artistic License /GNU General Public License |
| Website | Official website |
| Repository | |
cowsay is a program that generatesASCII art pictures of a cow with a message.[2] It can also generate pictures using pre-made images of other animals, such asTux the Penguin, the Linuxmascot. It is written inPerl. There is also a related program calledcowthink, with cows with thought bubbles rather thanspeech bubbles..cow files for cowsay exist which are able to produce different variants of cows, with different kinds of eyes, and so forth.[3] It is sometimes used onIRC, desktop screenshots, and insoftware documentation. It is more or less a joke withinhacker culture, but has been around long enough that its use is rather widespread. In 2007, it was highlighted as aDebian package of the day.[4]
The Unix commandfortune can also bepiped into thecowsay command:
[user@hostname ~]$fortune|cowsay ________________________________________/ You have Egyptian flu: you're going to \\ be a mummy. / ---------------------------------------- \ ^__^ \ (oo)\_______ (__)\ )\/\ ||----w | || ||
Using the parameter-f followed bytux, one can replace the cow with other beings, such asTux, the Linux mascot:
[user@hostname ~]$fortune|cowsay-ftux _________________________________________/ You are only young once, but you can \\ stay immature indefinitely. / ----------------------------------------- \ \ .--. |o_o | |:_/ | // \ \ (| | ) /'\_ _/`\ \___)=(___/
Using the parameter-l shows all available cow files:
[user@hostname ~]$cowsay-lCow files in /usr/share/cowsay/cows:apt bud-frogs bunny calvin cheese cock cower daemon default dragondragon-and-cow duck elephant elephant-in-snake eyes flaming-sheep foxghostbusters gnu hellokitty kangaroo kiss koala kosh luke-koalamech-and-cow milk moofasa moose pony pony-smaller ren sheep skeletonsnowman stegosaurus stimpy suse three-eyes turkey turtle tux uniponyunipony-smaller vader vader-koala www
| Option | Purpose |
|---|---|
| -n | Disablesword wrap, allowing the cow to speakFIGlet or to display other embeddedASCII art. Width in columns becomes that of the longest line, ignoring any value of-W. Only works with text from stdin. |
| -W | Specifies width of thespeech balloon in columns, i.e. characters in a monospace font. Default value is 40. |
| -b | “Borg mode”, uses== in place ofoo for the cow′s eyes. |
| -d | “Dead”, usesXX, plus a descendingU to represent an extruded tongue, also used onLinux kernel oops. |
| -g | “Greedy”, uses$$. |
| -p | “Paranoid”, uses@@. |
| -s | “Stoned”, uses** to representbloodshot eyes, plus a descendingU to represent an extruded tongue. |
| -t | “Tired”, uses--. |
| -w | “Wired”, usesOO. |
| -y | “Youthful”, uses.. to represent smaller eyes. |
| -e eye_string | Manually specifies the cow′s eye-type, e.g.cowsay -e ^^ (seeEastern-style emoticon).[5] |
| -T tongue_string | Manually specifies the cow′s tongue shape, e.g.cowsay -T \(\) for a pair ofparentheses.[5] |
| -f cowfile | Specifies a .cow file from which to load alternative ASCII art. Accepts both absolute file-paths and those relative to theenvironment variableCOWPATH. |
| -l | Lists the names of available cow-files in theCOWPATH directory instead of displaying a quote. |
