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

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 3.03 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.

FILES

       /usr/share/cowsay/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).