BCD(1)

📦 version 1.053, in alpine 3.24

💳 bcd(1) — the punch card glamour station

ok so before we even start: this is bcd(1), a page from the User Contributed Perl Documentation section of the manual. yes bestie, Perl docs, we love a legacy moment 💅

✨ NAME ✨

bcd — literally formats your input as punch cards 🎀 like, actual ASCII art punch cards. retro icon behavior only.

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

bcd [-l] [string ...]
bcd -d [-l]

that's it. that's the whole vibe. two whole modes and a column-width flag, we stay simple 💖

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so here's the tea ☕ — bcd reads its input from either the command line arguments or standard input. pick your fighter, it doesn't care, it loves you either way 🫶

then it produces an ASCII art representation of punch card data. yes. we're printing fake punch cards in the terminal in the current year and honestly? iconic. no cap. 🔥

💅 OPTIONS 💅

the following options are available, and there are exactly two, so no scrolling fatigue, you're welcome:

  • -d — decode punch card data from standard input. it's the reverse girlie 💫 feed it your card art, get your data back.
  • -l — create punch cards with 80 columns. the default is 48 columns. so -l is for when you want the long card, the main character card, the full-width slay 👑
ngl the default being 48 and not 80 is genuinely a plot twist, but it's what the page says so we're respecting it ✨

👑 AUTHOR 👑

  • Written by Steve Hayman.
  • Translated to Perl by Michael Mikonos.

shoutout to the legends, fr fr 🫡

Copyright (c) 1989, 1993 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by Steve Hayman of the Indiana University Computer Science Dept.

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. 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.

yeah that's the whole legal paragraph, we do NOT skip the fine print in this house 😤 every word of it is load-bearing, keep it, respect it, don't touch it 💜

and that's the page bestie!! 💖 this lil server moment was brought to you by perl v5.42.2, dated 2026-02-15 — you're welcome, go make some punch card art 🌈🎀

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