PONYSAY(6)

🌈 PONYSAY 🦄

okay so bestie, welcome to the Games Manual section, because yes, ponysay is technically a game-adjacent little delight and the manual file literally lives at PONYSAY(6). Sit down, grab a strawberry 🍓, and let me tell you about the single most important terminal program you will ever install. No cap.

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✨ NAME ✨

ponysay — literally a Cowsay reimplementation, except it's for ponies 💖

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

ponysay [options] [--] [message]
ponythink [options] [--] [message]

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

ponysay displays an image of a pony saying some text provided by the user in a terminal. Iconic behaviour, honestly.

If message is not provided, it accepts standard input, word-wraps the message given at about 60 columns, and prints the pony saying the given message on standard output. She's polite like that 🎀

If no arguments are provided, the program only accepts standard input piped from another program, a file, or either here documents or here strings (see man bash(1) for details on here document/string). iykyk.

ponythink is to ponysay as cowthink is to cowsay. That's the whole relationship, they're siblings, don't make it weird 😭

For an extensive documentation run info ponysay. Yes, there's more, we're barely getting started.

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

A summary of options is included below. Strap in, there are so many 🫶

• -h, --help — Show summary of options.
• -v, --version — Show version of program.
• -f, --file, --pony name — Select a pony (either a file name or a pony name). You can use this option multiple times, and one of them will be selected randomly. Little roulette of friendship 💅
• +f, ++file, ++pony name — Select a pony outside of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (either a file name or a pony name). You can use this option multiple times, and one of them will be selected randomly.
• -F, --any-file, --anyfile, --anypony, --any-pony name — This option combines -f and +f.
• --f, --files, --ponies [name...] — Variadic variant of -f, meaning that all arguments added after this one will be parsed as an argument to this option.
• ++f, ++files, ++ponies [name...] — Variadic variant of +f, meaning that all arguments added after this one will be parsed as an argument to this option.
• --F, --any-files, --anyfiles, --anyponies, --any-ponies name — This option combines --f and ++f.
• -q, --quote [name...] — By using this option, a pony will be printed with quotes from her in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The pony will be selected randomly, unless at least one pony is added as an argument to -q. If more than one pony is added as an argument to -q, the pony will be selected randomly from that set of ponies. She said what she said 💀
• --q, --quotes [name...] — Variadic variant of -q, meaning that all arguments added after this one will be parsed as an argument to this option. Additionally, those options are added to -q.
• -b, --bubble, --balloon style — Specify the balloon style that should be used, this can either be a file name or a balloon name printed by ponysay -B.
• -W, --wrap column — The screen column where the message should be wrapped, the balloon's extra width is taken into consideration. If the argument is not a number, but starts instead with n, no wrapping is done, and if it starts with i the width of the terminal is used. Versatile queen 👑
• -c, --compress, --compact [ANSI-colour] — Compress the message in the same way cowsay does, that is basically without multiple spaces, and only paragraph separations.
• -l, --list — List pony files.
• -L, --symlist, --altlist — List pony files with alternative names inside brackets.
• +l, ++list — List non-MLP:FiM pony files.
• +L, ++symlist, ++altlist — List non-MLP:FiM pony files with alternative names inside brackets.
• -B, --bubblelist, --balloonlist style — Prints a list of all balloon styles.
• -A, --all — List all pony files, MLP:FiM and non-MLP:FiM, in this case the first list are MLP:FiM and the second are non-MLP:FiM.
• +A, ++all, --symall, --altall — List all pony files, including alternatives names inside brackets, these from MLP:FiM and non-MLP:FiM; the first list are the MLP:FiM and the second one are non-MLP:FiM.
• -o, --pony-only, --ponyonly — Just print the pony, nothing else like the speech balloon. Minimalist era 🦋
• -i, --info — By adding this flag you will get meta-data for a pony printed, rather than the pony itself.
• +i, ++info — This works just like the -i option, except the pony will use the output as her message rather than just print that information. She's reading her own Wikipedia page, honestly iconic.
• -r, --restriction — This option is used to restrict which ponies can be randomly selected based on their meta-data. A value in the argument is a combination of the tag name and tag value on the form NAME=VALUE.
• -X, --256-colours, --256colours, --x-colours — Use xterm's 256-colour support (supported by most X11 terminals), despite your terminal's actual compatibilities. Chaotic, but valid.
• -V, --tty-colours, --ttycolours, --vt-colours — Use Linux VT's compatibilities without KMS utilisation, despite your terminal's actual compatibilities.
• -K, --kms-colours, --kmscolours — Use Linux VT's compatibilities with KMS utilisation, despite your terminal's actual compatibilities. (May not work with all KMS video cards) ⚠️
• +c, --colour [ANSI-colour] — Colour the balloon, including link and message. For more colouring features, see the info manual. The argument, ANSI-colour, should be a ANSI colour sequence without leading CSI and without a trailing m, for example 1;31 will make it in red and bold (or bright depending on the terminal). Slay 💅
• --colour-bubble, --colour-balloon [ANSI-colour] — Just like --colour, but it only colours the balloon, without the message or link.
• --colour-link [ANSI-colour] — Just like --colour, but it only colours the balloon link.
• --colour-msg, --colour-message [ANSI-colour] — Just like --colour, but it only colours the message.
• --colour-pony [ANSI-colour] — Just like --colour, but it colours the pony. This colouring has no effect on regular pony files, as it has its own colouring.
• --colour-wrap, --colour-hyphen [ANSI-colour] — Just like --colour, but it colours hyphen added by the word wrapping. If you want uncoloured use 0, the default is 31.

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🌸 ENVIRONMENT 🌸

Like, the vibes you can set before you even run her:

• PONYSAY_BOTTOM — Under TTY (Linux VT), if the output is larger than the screen's height, only the beginning is printed, leaving two blank lines. If you want the bottom to be printed rather than the beginning you can export PONYSAY_BOTTOM with the value yes, y or 1.
• PONYSAY_SHELL_LINES — Under TTY (Linux VT), if the output is larger than the screen's height, two lines are left blank. If you want more, or less, blank lines you can export PONYSAY_SHELL_LINES with the value of how many blank lines you want.
• PONYSAY_FULL_WIDTH — You can export PONYSAY_FULL_WIDTH with the value yes, y or 1, if you do not want the output to be truncated on the width to fit the terminal. Full width, full drama ✨
• PONYSAY_TRUNCATE_HEIGHT — Export PONYSAY_TRUNCATE_HEIGHT with the value yes, y or 1, if you want to truncate the output on the height even if you are not running ponysay under TTY.
• PONYSAY_UCS_ME — Export PONYSAY_UCS_ME with the value yes, y or 1, if you want [simulated] symlink to pony files using Universal Character Set in their names.
• PONYSAY_KMS_PALETTE, PONYSAY_KMS_PALETTE_CMD — PONYSAY_KMS_PALETTE or PONYSAY_KMS_PALETTE_CMD is used to tell ponysay how your TTY palette looks; this feature lets you get the best images in TTY if you have Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) support. Peak performance, honestly.
• PONYSAY_TYPO_LIMIT — ponysay is able to auto-correct misspelled pony names and balloon style names. Without consideration for transpositioning, by default if the weighted distance is greater than 5 for the closest words, auto-correction is ignored. This limit can be changed by exporting the limit to PONYSAY_TYPO_LIMIT; setting the limit to zero will disable auto-correction. She's forgiving but not that forgiving 🙈
• PONYSAY_WRAP_HYPHEN — You can export what ponysay should use instead of a hyphen when wrapping messages.
• PONYSAY_WRAP_LIMIT — Defines how long a word must be to be hyphenated. This is used to wrap words that are long so the output gets as pretty as possible. This is not the only condition under which a word can be hyphenated, it can also be hyphenated if the word cannot fit otherwise.
• PONYSAY_WRAP_EXCEED — Defines how much a word must exceed the wrapping point to be hyphenated. This setting is used together with PONYSAY_WRAP_LIMIT.

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💀 BUG 💀

Bugs can be reported in <https://github.com/erkin/ponysay/issues>. Please be nice to the maintainers, they're doing their best 🫶

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

cowsay(1), fortune(6), ponysay-tool(6), info ponysay

(the whole friend group, fr fr)

🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

ponysay was written by Erkin Batu Altunbaş <erkinbatu@gmail.com> with contributions from Mattias Andrée, Elis Axelsson, Sven-Hendrik Haase, Pablo Lezaeta, Jan Alexander Steffens et al. Legends, all of them.

This manual page was originally written by Louis Taylor <kragniz@gmail.com> for the Debian GNU/Linux project (and may be used by others), and has been edited by the ponysay authors for the official ponysay release.

This program is licensed under GNU GPLv3+. Open source queen behaviour 👑

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and that's the whole manual bestie 💖 this glorious page dropped on November 09, 2013, and it's still serving main character energy in the Games Manual section — PONYSAY(6), periodt. 🦋