BANNER(1)

📦 version 1.053, in alpine 3.24

okay bestie, gather round — this is the User Contributed Perl Documentation page for banner, the tool that prints a large banner on a printer. It’s giving old-school lab core, and we’re gonna read it together. 🎀

🌸 NAME 🌸

banner — print large banner on printer. That’s the whole assignment, and it ate. 👑

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

banner [-w width] [message ...]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

banner prints a large, high-quality banner on the standard output. If the message is omitted, it prompts for and reads one line of its standard input. 🫶

  • -w width — if given, the output is scrunched down from a width of 132 to n, suitable for a narrow terminal. Lowkey magic, highkey useful. ✨

The output should be printed on a hard-copy device, up to 132 columns wide, with no breaks between the pages. The volume is great enough that you may want a printer or a fast hardcopy terminal — but if you’re patient, a decwriter or other 300 baud terminal will do. 💖

💀 BUGS 💀

The following bugs are preserved from the implementation on which this one is based:

  • Several ASCII characters are not defined, notably <, >, [, ], \, ^, _, {, }, |, and ~. Also, the characters ", ', and & are funny looking (but in a useful way.) 🙈
  • The -w option is implemented by skipping some rows and columns. The smaller it gets, the grainier the output. Sometimes it runs letters together. 😭

Any new bugs are as yet unknown. 💀

👑 AUTHOR 👑

The Perl implementation of banner was written by Jonathan Feinberg, jdf@pobox.com.

The C source on which this implementation is based was written by Mark Horton.

okay so the author is legally like: because I consider this program to be, in essence, a modification of the BSD version of /usr/games/banner, I am bound to preserve the following copyright notice intact:

Copyright (c) 1980, 1993, 1994
       The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
   documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
   must display the following acknowledgement:
       This product includes software developed by the University of
       California, Berkeley and its contributors.
4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
   may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
   without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
SUCH DAMAGE.

That’s the whole page, bestie — stay cozy and keep your hardcopy game strong. 💖 This one’s from perl v5.42.2, dated 2026-02-15. ✨

📦 where this page comes from