cowsay

Display customizable messages with an ASCII cow

TLDR

Print an ASCII cow saying "hello, world"

$ cowsay "[hello, world]"

Print an ASCII cow saying text from stdin

$ echo "[hello, world]" | cowsay

List all available art types

$ cowsay -l

Print the specified ASCII art saying "hello, world"

$ cowsay -f [art] "[hello, world]"

Print a dead thinking ASCII cow

$ cowthink -d "[I'm just a cow, not a great thinker...]"

Print an ASCII cow with custom eyes saying "hello, world"

$ cowsay -e [characters] "[hello, world]"

SYNOPSIS

cowsay [-e eyes] [-f cowfile] [-h] [-l] [-n] [-T tongue] [-W column] [-bdgpstwy] message...

-e eyes
    Specifies the eye string for the cow. The default is 'oo'.

-f cowfile
    Specifies the path to the cowfile to use. Cowfiles define the appearance of the animal and the associated actions.

-h
    Displays the help message.

-l
    Lists all available cowfiles.

-n
    Disables word wrapping.

-T tongue
    Specifies the tongue string for the cow. The default is ' '.

-W column
    Specifies the column at which the cow will be wrapped. The default is 80.

-b
    Borg mode. The cow's eyes become '=='.

-d
    Dead mode. The cow's eyes become 'xx'.

-g
    Greedy mode. For security reasons, this will not work with user-specified cowfiles.

-p
    Paranoid mode.

-s
    Stoned mode. The cow's eyes become '**'.

-t
    Tired mode. The cow's eyes become '--'.

-w
    Wired mode. The cow's eyes become '^^'.

-y
    Youthful mode. The cow's eyes become '..'.

DESCRIPTION

The cowsay command is a whimsical program that generates ASCII pictures of a cow (or other animals) saying a user-provided message. It's often used for humorous effect in terminal environments, system messages, or shell scripts. cowsay reads the input message either from the command line arguments or from standard input and then formats it within a speech bubble. The appearance of the cow and the accompanying speech bubble can be customized using different cowfiles (templates for different animals and speech bubble styles). cowsay is a simple but popular command that demonstrates the playful side of the Linux command line.
It is installed with: apt install cowsay

CAVEATS

The appearance of the cow and the speech bubble may vary depending on the terminal font and size.

COWFILES

Cowfiles are text files that define the ASCII art for different animals or characters. They typically reside in /usr/share/cowsay/cows. To use a specific cowfile, specify its name (without the '.cow' extension) using the '-f' option. You can find a list of available cowfiles using the '-l' option. You can also create custom cowfiles, but you need to place them in a specific directory and ensure they are correctly formatted to avoid errors.

HISTORY

cowsay was originally written by Tony Monroe in Perl. It has since been ported to other languages and is widely available on various Unix-like systems. Its popularity stems from its simplicity and ability to add a touch of humor to the command line. It quickly became a staple in many *nix environments, often used in scripts and system messages to provide a lighthearted notification.