NAME

cow{say,think} - A configurable talking (or thinking) cow

SYNOPSIS

Usage: $progname [-bdgpstwy] [-hv?] [-e eyes] [-f cowfile] [-l] [-n] [-T tongue] [-W wrapcolumn] [message]

DESCRIPTION

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, -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 invoking with -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 eyes will be used. The default eyes are 'oo'. The tongue is similarly configurable through -T; 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 a slash ("/") then it will be interpreted as a path relative to the current directory. Otherwise, cowsay will first search @INC for installed cows under the Acme::Cow:: hierarchy, and then search the path specified in the COWPATH environment variable. To list all cowfiles installed as modules (in @INC) and on the current COWPATH, invoke cowsay with the -l switch.

If the program is invoked as cowthink (or any word that has "think" as a substring) then the cow will think its message instead of saying it.

If you would like to write your own cow files, please consult Acme::Cow and the cowfiles provided with the distribution (in the cows subdirectory).

WARNINGS

Cow files for cowsay 4 are not compatible with earlier versions; they must be converted.

The author is not responsible if people are offended or institutionalized because of the use of this software. (The author is also not responsible in general, but that's a separate matter.)

SEE ALSO

perl(1), figlet(6), Acme::Cow

AUTHOR

Tony Monroe <tmonroe plus perl at nog dot net>. Has been called a freak many times for even thinking of such a piece of software, let alone writing it.

The following have contributed cow files, directly or indirectly:

Shannon Appel, Jordan K Hubbard, Donald Kubasak, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Lincoln Myers, David Petrou, Anthony S Polito, Geordan Rosario, Eric Rowe, Lars Smith, <pborys at p-soft dot silesia dot linux dot org dot pl>.

If your name is not on this list, and it should be, then feel free to mail the author and remind him gently.

BUGS

tend to hang around cows. Cows sometimes try to shoo them away with their tails.

Bugs should be reported to the author as soon as they are found, so he may correct them, or quickly write them off as user error. :-)

HISTORY

Cowsay 1 (1996?) was a very limited cow, which only said things in a particular format: subject is verbing object. Cowsay 2 (1997?) overcame that limitation, and added alternate cow files, and thought capabilities. Cowsay 3 (1999) was a rewrite in Perl 5. Cowsay 4 (2002) leverages Perl's object facilities to make the author's life easier.