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cowsay is a configurable talking cow, written in Perl. It draws an ASCII cow with a speech balloon (or a think balloon) saying whatever pithy comment you give it on the command line. The program requires Perl 5.005_03 or newer. Debian Weekly News calls cowsay "an absolutely vital program for turning text into happy ASCII cows". So there you go; you need it.
According to the manpage, there are several command-line options to change the apparance of the cow:
You can also pass in characters for the eyes and tongue, use any of 47 supplied cowfiles (not all of which are cows), or create your own cowfile. A cowfile is a Perl script ending in .cow. The script contains a variable $the_cow containing a picture of the cow. Remember to backslash your "@"'s!
- -b
- Borg
- -d
- dead
- -g
- greedy
- -p
- paranoid
- -s
- stoned
- -t
- tired
- -w
- wired (opposite of tired)
- -y
- youthful
For those who can't wait to see the cows, here are some screenshots:
Script started on Fri May 25 11:56:46 2001
$ cowsay "Hello, bovine world! "
_______________________
< Hello, bovine world! >
-----------------------
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
$ cowsay -b "Hello, bovine world! "
_______________________
< Hello, bovine world! >
-----------------------
\ ^__^
\ (==)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
$ M="Hello, bovine world\!"
$ cowsay -d $M
______________________
< Hello, bovine world! >
----------------------
\ ^__^
\ (xx)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
U ||----w |
|| ||
$ cowsay -p $M
______________________
< Hello, bovine world! >
----------------------
\ ^__^
\ (@@)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
$ cowsay -s $M
______________________
< Hello, bovine world! >
----------------------
\ ^__^
\ (**)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
U ||----w |
|| ||
$ cowsay -y $M
______________________
< Hello, bovine world! >
----------------------
\ ^__^
\ (..)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
$ cowsay -f tux $M
_______________________
< Hello, bovine world! >
-----------------------
\
\
.--.
|o_o |
|:_/ |
// \ \
(| | )
/'\_ _/`\
\___)=(___/
$ cowsay -f dragon $M
_______________________
< Hello, bovine world! >
-----------------------
\ / \ //\
\ |\___/| / \// \\
/0 0 \__ / // | \ \
/ / \/_/ // | \ \
@_^_@'/ \/_ // | \ \
//_^_/ \/_ // | \ \
( //) | \/// | \ \
( / /) _|_ / ) // | \ _\
( // /) '/,_ _ _/ ( ; -. | _ _\.-~ .-~~~^-.
(( / / )) ,-{ _ `-.|.-~-. .~ `.
(( // / )) '/\ / ~-. _ .-~ .-~^-. \
(( /// )) `. { } / \ \
(( / )) .----~-.\ \-' .~ \ `. \^-.
///.----..> \ _ -~ `. ^-` ^-_
///-._ _ _ _ _ _ _}^ - - - - ~ ~-- ,.-~
/.-~
$
Script done on Fri May 25 11:59:03 2001
I like that dragon, BTW.
Find cowsay at
https://www.nog.net/~tony/warez/cowsay.shtml
or in the unstable branch of your nearest
Debian mirror, in section "games".
(PS. The author's site has a link to the
Cows with Guns site, which has
a shadow image of, er, two cows with guns saying, "Four legs good. Two
legs bad," from Orwell's Animal Farm. I wonder if Eric Raymond
would approve?
Mike ("Iron") is the Editor of Linux Gazette. You can read
what he has to say in the Back Page column in this issue. He has been a Linux
enthusiast since 1991 and a Debian user since 1995. He is SSC's web technical
coordinator, which means he gets to write a lot of Python scripts.
Non-computer interests include Ska/Oi! music and the international language
Esperanto. The nickname Iron was given to him in college--short for Iron Orr,
hahaha.
Mike Orr
Copyright © 2001, Mike Orr.
Copying license https://www.linuxgazette.net/copying.html
Published in Issue 67 of Linux Gazette, June 2001