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Cowsay Man page: hilarious!

This is /NOT/ fiction.. have a look at the screenshot to know more ..

( and yes install it! )

cowsay(1)

 

cowsay(1)

 

NAME

cowsay/cowthink - configurable speaking/thinking cow (and a bit more)

 

SYNOPSIS

cowsay [-e eye_string] [-f cowfile] [-h] [-l] [-n] [-T

tongue_string] [-W column] [-bdgpstwy]

 

DESCRIPTION

Cowsay generates an ASCII picture of a cow saying something

provided by the user. If run with no arguments, it accepts standard

input, word-wraps the message given at about 40 columns, and prints

the cow saying the given message on

standard output.

 

To aid in the use of arbitrary messages with arbitrary

whitespace, use the -n option. If it is specified, the given message

will not be word-wrapped. This is possibly useful if you want to make

the cow think or speak in figlet(6). If

-n is specified, there must not be any command-line arguments

left after all the switches have been processed.

 

The -W specifies roughly (where the message should be wrapped.

The default is equivalent to -W 40 i.e. wrap words at or before the

40th column.

 

If any command-line arguments are left over after all switches

have been processed, they become the cow's message. The program will

not accept standard input for a message in this case.

 

There are several provided modes which change the

appearance of the cow depending on its particular emotional/physical

state. The -b option initiates Borg mode; -d causes the cow to appear

dead; -g invokes greedy mode; -p causes a

state of paranoia to come over the cow; -s makes the cow appear

thoroughly stoned; -t yields a tired cow; -w is somewhat the opposite

of -t, and initiates wired mode; -y brings on the cow's youthful

appearance.

 

The user may specify the -e option to select the appearance of

the cow's eyes, in which case the first two characters of the argument

string eye_string will be used. The default eyes are 'oo'. The

tongue is similarly configurable

through -T and tongue_string; it must be two characters and

does not appear by default. However, it does appear in the 'dead' and

'stoned' modes. Any configuration done by -e and -T will be lost if

one of the provided modes is used.

 

The -f option specifies a particular cow picture file

(``cowfile'') to use. If the cowfile spec contains '/' then it will

be interpreted as a path relative to the current directory.

Otherwise, cowsay will search the path specified in

the COWPATH environment variable. To list all cowfiles on the

current COWPATH, invoke cowsay with the -l switch.

 

If the program is invoked as cowthink then the cow will think

its message instead of saying it.

 

COWFILE FORMAT

A cowfile is made up of a simple block of perl(1) code, which

assigns a picture of a cow to the variable $the_cow. Should you wish

to customize the eyes or the tongue of the cow, then the variables

$eyes and $tongue may be used. The

trail leading up to the cow's message balloon is

composed of the character(s) in the $thoughts variable. Any

backslashes must be reduplicated to prevent interpolation. The name

of a cowfile should end with .cow, otherwise it is

assumed not to be a cowfile. Also, at-signs (``@'') must be

backslashed because that is what Perl 5 expects.

 

COMPATIBILITY WITH OLDER VERSIONS

What older versions? :-)

 

Version 3.x is fully backward-compatible with 2.x versions. If

you're still using a 1.x version, consider upgrading. And tell me

where you got the older versions, since I didn't exactly put them up

for world-wide access.

 

Oh, just so you know, this manual page documents version 3.02 of cowsay.

 

ENVIRONMENT

The COWPATH environment variable, if present, will be used to

search for cowfiles. It contains a colon-separated list of

directories, much like PATH or MANPATH. It should always contain the

/usr/local/share/cows directory, or at least

a directory with a file called default.cow in it.

 

FILES

/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_textproc_cowsay/work/destroot/opt/local/share/cows

holds a sample set of cowfiles. If your COWPATH is not explicitly

set, it automatically

contains this directory.

 

BUGS

If there are any, please notify the author at the address below.

 

AUTHOR

Tony Monroe (tony@nog.net), with suggestions from Shannon Appel

(appel@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU) and contributions from Anthony Polito

(aspolito@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU).

 

SEE ALSO

perl(1), wall(1), nwrite(1), figlet(6)

 

$Date: 1999/11/04 19:50:40 $

 

cowsay(1)

 

--

Manish Chakravarty

Blog: manish-chaks.livejournal.com/

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/manishchakravarty

Twitter: twitter.com/ManishChaks

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Uploaded on July 13, 2009