Cowsay

Last updated
cowsay
Original author Tony Monroe
Initial release1999
Stable release
3.8.4 [1]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 30 November 2024;13 months ago (30 November 2024)
Repository
Written in Perl
Operating system Cross-platform
Available in English
License Artistic License / GNU General Public License
Website Official website OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

cowsay is a program that generates ASCII art pictures of a cow with a message. [2] It can also generate pictures using pre-made images of other animals, such as Tux the Penguin, the Linux mascot. It is written in Perl. There is also a related program called cowthink, with cows with thought bubbles rather than speech 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 on IRC, desktop screenshots, and in software documentation. It is more or less a joke within hacker culture, but has been around long enough that its use is rather widespread. In 2007, it was highlighted as a Debian package of the day. [4]

Contents

Example

The Unix command fortune can also be piped into the cowsay command:

[user@hostname ~]$ fortune|cowsay  ________________________________________/ You have Egyptian flu: you're going to \\ be a mummy.                            / ----------------------------------------        \   ^__^         \  (oo)\_______            (__)\       )\/\                ||----w |                ||     ||

Using the parameter -f followed by tux, one can replace the cow with other beings, such as Tux, 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-l Cow 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

Parameters

OptionPurpose
-nDisables word wrap, allowing the cow to speak FIGlet or to display other embedded ASCII art. Width in columns becomes that of the longest line, ignoring any value of -W. Only works with text from stdin.
-WSpecifies width of the speech balloon in columns, i.e. characters in a monospace font. Default value is 40.
-b“Borg mode”, uses == in place of oo for the cow′s eyes.
-d“Dead”, uses XX, plus a descending U to represent an extruded tongue, also used on Linux kernel oops.
-g“Greedy”, uses $$.
-p“Paranoid”, uses @@.
-s“Stoned”, uses ** to represent bloodshot eyes, plus a descending U to represent an extruded tongue.
-t“Tired”, uses --.
-w“Wired”, uses OO.
-y“Youthful”, uses .. to represent smaller eyes.
-e eye_stringManually specifies the cow′s eye-type, e.g. cowsay -e ^^ (see Eastern-style emoticon). [5]
-T tongue_stringManually specifies the cow′s tongue shape, e.g. cowsay -T \(\) for a pair of parentheses. [5]
-f cowfileSpecifies a .cow file from which to load alternative ASCII art. Accepts both absolute file-paths and those relative to the environment variable COWPATH.
-lLists the names of available cow-files in the COWPATH directory instead of displaying a quote.

References

  1. ↑ "Release 3.8.4". 30 November 2024. Retrieved 29 December 2024.
  2. ↑ Orr, Mike (June 2001). "cowsay--ASCII Art for Your Screen". Linux Gazette. Archived from the original on 2012-03-19. Retrieved 2012-04-24.
  3. ↑ Newborough, Philip (2007-10-05). "A Virtual Richard Stallman for Cowsay Hack". Archived from the original on 2011-07-25.
  4. ↑ Beshenov, Alexey (2007-10-28). "cowsay: a configurable talking and thinking cow". Debian Package of the Day. Archived from the original on 2007-10-30. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
  5. 1 2 Characters other than printable in C0 controls and basic Latin (U+0021–U+007E) will not display properly as these parameters accept only the first two bytes of input value. Using a pre-defined cow-face will over-ride any value of -e and -T.
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