COWSAY(6)

📦 version 3.03, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 COWSAY(6) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the cowsay / cowthink manual page, from the Games Manual section. it's a configurable speaking/thinking cow and honestly? a bit more than that. 🐄✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

cowsay / cowthink — a configurable speaking/thinking cow (and a bit more). she contains multitudes fr fr. 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

cowsay [-e eye_string] [-f cowfile] [-h] [-l] [-n] [-T tongue_string]
[-W column] [-bdgpstwy]

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so like. cowsay generates an ASCII picture of a cow saying whatever you give her. if you run it with no arguments at all, she just accepts standard input, word-wraps your message at around 40 columns, and prints the cow saying the message to standard output. no notes. iconic behaviour. 💖

now, if you want to use arbitrary messages with arbitrary whitespace, that's what the -n option is for. specify -n and your message will not be word-wrapped. this is possibly useful if you want to make the cow think or speak in figlet(6). but heads up bestie: if -n is specified, there must not be any command-line arguments left after all the switches have been processed. none. zero. 🚫

the -W option 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. she's got boundaries, and honestly, good for her. 🎀

if any command-line arguments are left over after all switches have been processed, they become the cow's message. and in that case, the program will not accept standard input for a message. it's one or the other, babe. 💅

🦋 the mood ring modes 🦋

there are several provided modes which change the appearance of the cow depending on its particular emotional/physical state. it's giving astrology but for bovines. 🔥

  • -b — 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 — somewhat the opposite of -t, and initiates wired mode
  • -y — brings on the cow's youthful appearance

👀 eyes, tongue, vibes 👀

you 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'. so cute. 🥺

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. make of that what you will. 💀

⚠️ any configuration done by -e and -T will be lost if one of the provided modes is used. periodt. so pick your lane.

🐮 cowfiles, the whole thing 🐮

the -f option specifies a particular cow picture file (a 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. window shopping, but for cows. 🛍️✨

and if the program is invoked as cowthink then the cow will think its message instead of saying it. introvert cow hours. 💭

🧚 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. no cap, perl is like that. 🐪

🌈 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. like, how did you even get those bestie. 😭

oh, just so you know, this manual page documents version 3.03 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/share/cowsay/cows directory, or at least a directory with a file called default.cow in it. otherwise she's just standing there with nowhere to look. 🙈

🍓 FILES 🍓

  • /usr/share/cowsay/cows — holds a sample set of cowfiles. if your COWPATH is not explicitly set, it automatically contains this directory. the mothership. 👑

💀 BUGS 💀

if there are any, please notify the author at the address below. (yes that's the whole section. she said "if there are any." confident queen. 💅)

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Tony Monroe (tony@nog.net), with suggestions from Shannon Appel (appel@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU) and contributions from Anthony Polito (aspolito@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU). shoutout to the cow architects. 🫶

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

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

okay that's the whole page bestie, you ate it, you read it, you're basically a cowfile sommelier now. 🐄💖✨

that's a wrap on this manual page — and the source/version/date stamp on it is <code>$Date: 1999/11/04 19:50:40 $</code>, so yeah, this cow has been iconic since 1999 and is still serving looks in the Games Manual. slay forever. 💅🌈

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