A silly toy used to enhance text at the Linux command line since 2016.


$ ddate | cowsay -f tux 

 ________________________________________ 
/ Today is Prickle-Prickle, the 47th day \
\ of The Aftermath in the YOLD 3190      /
 ---------------------------------------- 
   \
    \
        .--.
       |o_o |
       |:_/ |
      //   \ \
     (|     | )
    /'\_   _/`\
    \___)=(___/


This is one of those daft toys that some geeks do like to play with.

To use it, go cowsay {"text string"}, thus: cowsay "Hello world" or, as with the example above, pipe in the output of another command. It's a daft showoff toy, but one that gives me a mild pleasure to use. in addition to the cow (not pictured above) there are many other ASCII art images to use including many geek standards (including Beavis and Butthead and inevitably Tux the Linux penguin mascot).

ANother example:

fortune | cowsay

 _________________________________ 
/ MATH AND ALCOHOL DON'T MIX!     \
|                                 |
| Please, don't drink and derive. |
|                                 |
| Mathematicians                  |
|                                 |
| Against                         |
|                                 |
| Drunk                           |
|                                 |
\ Deriving                        /
 --------------------------------- 
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||






$ xclip -o | wc -w
139