7 ms·

Cowsay

106 points by tontonius 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
wwilim 3y ago
I like putting it at the end of scripts that take a long time, it's hard to miss the script having completed this way
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  That's an excellent idea. It neatly distinguishes a script that completes successfully from a script that exits prematurely.
vander_elst 3y ago
I use this very often with my kids (3yo twins). It's fun for them to see animals, dragons and other things popping up on the white screen. I usually ask them what they what they want see, prepare it and then let them press on enter to display it. Simpler things e.g. 'gnu' or 'fox' they can type themselves.
- tarcar 3y ago
  If they like ponies then check out ponysay, just an alternative with some cute colorful ponies in the terminal!
  - 082349872349872 3y ago
    next project: use sed (or your favourite shell/scripting language) as a filter in front of ponysay, to rewrite "anybody"->"anypony", "somebody"->"somepony", etc.
  - koolba 3y ago
    Colorful ponies? Blasphemy! The Unix way is to do one thing and do it well: fortune | cowsay | lolcat
mindcrime 3y ago
----------------------------------------- < pg says 'What problem does this solve?' > ----------------------------------------- \ ^__^ \ (oo)\_______ (__)\ )\/\ ||----w | || ||
- nojs 3y ago
  The best startups always look like toys initially.
  - thih9 3y ago
    The worst too though. I.e. watch out for survivorship bias.
    - lambdaba 3y ago
      Cowsay has been around for decades. It's here to stay.
      - thih9 3y ago
        Note that my reply was about startups, and not about cowsay (which is not a startup).
        mindcrime 3y ago
        > cowsay (which is not a startup). True, but just wait until we unleash the first CaaS (Cowsay as a Service) on the world in a few weeks... We're going to make a gazillion dollars! I can feel it.
TaylorAlexander 3y ago
On every machine I operate, I put > fortune | cowsay in to my .bashrc. Every time I open a new terminal I get a cow telling me a fortune. I have done this for about 10 years now and it just feels right.
- Xaiph_Rahci 3y ago
  Mine is very similar (fortune -c | cowsay -f tux) I don't think I've ever seen a cookie repeat in over 10 years, but it might just be my poor memory
  - thih9 3y ago
    The default data file[1] contains 500kB of plaintext fortunes, this seems plausible. [1]: http://bxr.su/OpenBSD/games/fortune/datfiles/fortunes http://bxr.su/OpenBSD/games/fortune/datfiles/fortunes
- bluedino 3y ago
  I know a guy who got fired for doing this.
  - hnlmorg 3y ago
    I’d wager there was more going on than just this. He was under performing, or failing in some other way and this was just the excuse to get rid of him.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    Well that doesn't seem reasonable or a valid excuse for firing someone (or at least in places with a minimum of employee protection). What problem does it cause if you customise your shell prompt?
  - LinuxBender 3y ago
    I used to send fortune to a printer display. It did backfire as some of the fortune quotes can be offensive if they get cut-off by the display. Flags are required to do the true one-liners. Nobody actually got upset as much more offensive things were shouted across the room daily [1] but leadership suggested it should be avoided. [1] - The Oracle system pw was intentionally as offensive as it could be and people would forget it on purpose so it could be shouted across the room. I have good memories of that place. It was laid back and the people were fun. It was acquired and parted out by a bank.
becquerel 3y ago
perhaps the only good program ever written?
- pfarrell 3y ago
  Let’s not forget sl
  - ffsm8 3y ago
    And gti
  - allarm 3y ago
    Oh yeah, just for a second I thought it wasn’t irony. Let’s set up the guardrails.
elif 3y ago
All the best hackers pipe their script output to cowsay.
Toorkit 3y ago
It's a bit weird finding `cowsay -f sodomized` though lol
RadiozRadioz 3y ago
If you have this installed on your system and run an Ansible playbook, all the playbook logging will be automatically piped through cowsay. I'm not sure why anyone would want to, but you can disable this behavior by setting ANSIBLE_NOCOWS=1
- more-coffee 3y ago
  It's a tad silly that they made this the default
  - allarm 3y ago
    That’s not the only silly thing they did. Ansible is awful.
- bravetraveler 3y ago
  I have a hard time finding where I land with this Easter egg. Someone who doesn't appreciate a little fun, probably won't have cowsay installed on their controller And yet... I've been toting around a role that's basically a list of packages to ensure are absent from the controller/managed hosts. Cowsay has been a long time resident For such a little piece of fun, I 'have' to maintain a lot unnecessarily (if I want useful output) I think this not being a "whoa neat" thing I encounter every now and then... but something I regularly endure, is part of it. We aren't all solo administrators
- gdulli 3y ago
  I found this out by accident. I wasn't mad.
taopai 3y ago
Cowsay was one of the first "hacky show your friends" command. I still use it when I want to impress someone. I've been using this a lot. Check this out: $ fortune | figlet | cowsay -n -f tux or $ fortune | cowsay -n -f dragon even this! $ fortune | cowsay -n -f dragon | cowsay -n | cowsay -n -tux
dvh 3y ago
For more practical use try espeak, I often use it in long running scripts that runs somewhere in background, e.g. it tells me when keyboard get disconnected because of the soldering iron or when it's time for dinner, or a pomodoro timer, or reminds me I should turn off IM when I put new work in time tracking app.
- mindcrime 3y ago
  > or a pomodoro timer, That's one of my top uses for espeak. I have a script setup as /home/bin/work that looks like this: #!/bin/bash sleepTime="20m" # default is 20 minutes if [ -z "$1" ]; then echo "using sleepTime = $sleepTime" else echo "using sleepTime = $1" sleepTime=$1 fi reset ; date ; echo "You should be working ($sleepTime)" ; sleep $sleepTime ; reset ; echo "Time to take a break!" ; while true ; do espeak-ng "Time to take a break"; sleep 3s ; done This was inspired by another HN poster from a post a few years ago. I'd credit them, but I don't remember exactly who it was now. That said, I'm sure this script could be improved considerably, but for my purposes it suffices.
- pimlottc 3y ago
  For Apple users, you can use the `say` command which is included in macOS.
makapuf 3y ago
Interesting take from the git repo: some files were committed 25years ago ! See by example https://github.com/tnalpgge/rank-amateur-cowsay/blob/master/INSTALL https://github.com/tnalpgge/rank-amateur-cowsay/blob/master/...
starkparker 3y ago
For fans of neofetch, you can replace the OS logo with a cowsay animal. neofetch --ascii "$(fortune | cowsay -W 25)" __________________________ ...@fedora / Q. Why is this so \ ----------------- | clumsy? A. The trick is | OS: Fedora Linux 39 (KDE Plasma) x86_64 | to use Perl's strengths | Host: Laptop 13 (AMD Ryzen 7040Series) A5 | rather than its | Kernel: 6.7.6-200.fc39.x86_64 | weaknesses. | Uptime: 3 hours, 48 mins | | Packages: 3936 (rpm), 50 (flatpak) | -- Larry Wall in | Shell: bash 5.2.26 | <8225@jpl-devvax.JPL.NAS | Resolution: 2256x1504 \ A.GOV> / DE: Plasma 5.27.10 -------------------------- WM: kwin \ ^__^ Theme: [Plasma], Breeze [GTK2/3] \ (oo)\_______ Icons: [Plasma], breeze [GTK2/3] (__)\ )\/\ Terminal: konsole ||----w | CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7640U w/ Radeon 760M Graphics (12) @ 4.971GHz || || GPU: AMD ATI c1:00.0 Phoenix1 Memory: 4702MiB / 27742MiB
gregors 3y ago
> fortune | cowsay Definitely be careful about using fortune in a corporate environment or public space if you don't know what dat files you are using or you might just get an extremely unwelcome surprise. I was practicing a presentation and used to use fortune all the time. I forget exactly what it output but I remember being absolutely mortified about what could have happened if that had popped up during an internal company tech talk. Kudos to brew for keeping unsuspecting people safe https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/commit/3fb3c4c3e5507a0d4022ec71a81c2358a0fd6ae1 https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/commit/3fb3c4c3e55...

Cowsay

106 points by tontonius 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

wwilim 3y ago

I like putting it at the end of scripts that take a long time, it's hard to miss the script having completed this way

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
That's an excellent idea. It neatly distinguishes a script that completes successfully from a script that exits prematurely.

vander_elst 3y ago

I use this very often with my kids (3yo twins). It's fun for them to see animals, dragons and other things popping up on the white screen. I usually ask them what they what they want see, prepare it and then let them press on enter to display it. Simpler things e.g. 'gnu' or 'fox' they can type themselves.

tarcar 3y ago
If they like ponies then check out ponysay, just an alternative with some cute colorful ponies in the terminal!
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  next project: use sed (or your favourite shell/scripting language) as a filter in front of ponysay, to rewrite "anybody"->"anypony", "somebody"->"somepony", etc.
- koolba 3y ago
  Colorful ponies? Blasphemy! The Unix way is to do one thing and do it well: fortune | cowsay | lolcat

mindcrime 3y ago

----------------------------------------- < pg says 'What problem does this solve?' > ----------------------------------------- \ ^__^ \ (oo)\_______ (__)\ )\/\ ||----w | || ||

nojs 3y ago
The best startups always look like toys initially.
- thih9 3y ago
  The worst too though. I.e. watch out for survivorship bias.
  - lambdaba 3y ago
    Cowsay has been around for decades. It's here to stay.
    - thih9 3y ago
      Note that my reply was about startups, and not about cowsay (which is not a startup).
      - mindcrime 3y ago
        > cowsay (which is not a startup). True, but just wait until we unleash the first CaaS (Cowsay as a Service) on the world in a few weeks... We're going to make a gazillion dollars! I can feel it.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago

On every machine I operate, I put > fortune | cowsay in to my .bashrc. Every time I open a new terminal I get a cow telling me a fortune. I have done this for about 10 years now and it just feels right.

Xaiph_Rahci 3y ago
Mine is very similar (fortune -c | cowsay -f tux) I don't think I've ever seen a cookie repeat in over 10 years, but it might just be my poor memory
- thih9 3y ago
  The default data file[1] contains 500kB of plaintext fortunes, this seems plausible. [1]: http://bxr.su/OpenBSD/games/fortune/datfiles/fortunes http://bxr.su/OpenBSD/games/fortune/datfiles/fortunes
bluedino 3y ago
I know a guy who got fired for doing this.
- hnlmorg 3y ago
  I’d wager there was more going on than just this. He was under performing, or failing in some other way and this was just the excuse to get rid of him.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  Well that doesn't seem reasonable or a valid excuse for firing someone (or at least in places with a minimum of employee protection). What problem does it cause if you customise your shell prompt?
- LinuxBender 3y ago
  I used to send fortune to a printer display. It did backfire as some of the fortune quotes can be offensive if they get cut-off by the display. Flags are required to do the true one-liners. Nobody actually got upset as much more offensive things were shouted across the room daily [1] but leadership suggested it should be avoided. [1] - The Oracle system pw was intentionally as offensive as it could be and people would forget it on purpose so it could be shouted across the room. I have good memories of that place. It was laid back and the people were fun. It was acquired and parted out by a bank.

becquerel 3y ago

perhaps the only good program ever written?

pfarrell 3y ago
Let’s not forget sl
- ffsm8 3y ago
  And gti
- allarm 3y ago
  Oh yeah, just for a second I thought it wasn’t irony. Let’s set up the guardrails.

elif 3y ago

All the best hackers pipe their script output to cowsay.

Toorkit 3y ago

It's a bit weird finding `cowsay -f sodomized` though lol

RadiozRadioz 3y ago

If you have this installed on your system and run an Ansible playbook, all the playbook logging will be automatically piped through cowsay. I'm not sure why anyone would want to, but you can disable this behavior by setting ANSIBLE_NOCOWS=1

more-coffee 3y ago
It's a tad silly that they made this the default
- allarm 3y ago
  That’s not the only silly thing they did. Ansible is awful.
bravetraveler 3y ago
I have a hard time finding where I land with this Easter egg. Someone who doesn't appreciate a little fun, probably won't have cowsay installed on their controller And yet... I've been toting around a role that's basically a list of packages to ensure are absent from the controller/managed hosts. Cowsay has been a long time resident For such a little piece of fun, I 'have' to maintain a lot unnecessarily (if I want useful output) I think this not being a "whoa neat" thing I encounter every now and then... but something I regularly endure, is part of it. We aren't all solo administrators
gdulli 3y ago
I found this out by accident. I wasn't mad.

taopai 3y ago

dvh 3y ago

For more practical use try espeak, I often use it in long running scripts that runs somewhere in background, e.g. it tells me when keyboard get disconnected because of the soldering iron or when it's time for dinner, or a pomodoro timer, or reminds me I should turn off IM when I put new work in time tracking app.

mindcrime 3y ago
> or a pomodoro timer, That's one of my top uses for espeak. I have a script setup as /home/bin/work that looks like this: #!/bin/bash sleepTime="20m" # default is 20 minutes if [ -z "$1" ]; then echo "using sleepTime = $sleepTime" else echo "using sleepTime = $1" sleepTime=$1 fi reset ; date ; echo "You should be working ($sleepTime)" ; sleep $sleepTime ; reset ; echo "Time to take a break!" ; while true ; do espeak-ng "Time to take a break"; sleep 3s ; done This was inspired by another HN poster from a post a few years ago. I'd credit them, but I don't remember exactly who it was now. That said, I'm sure this script could be improved considerably, but for my purposes it suffices.
pimlottc 3y ago
For Apple users, you can use the `say` command which is included in macOS.

makapuf 3y ago

Interesting take from the git repo: some files were committed 25years ago ! See by example https://github.com/tnalpgge/rank-amateur-cowsay/blob/master/INSTALL https://github.com/tnalpgge/rank-amateur-cowsay/blob/master/...

starkparker 3y ago

For fans of neofetch, you can replace the OS logo with a cowsay animal. neofetch --ascii "$(fortune | cowsay -W 25)" __________________________ ...@fedora / Q. Why is this so \ ----------------- | clumsy? A. The trick is | OS: Fedora Linux 39 (KDE Plasma) x86_64 | to use Perl's strengths | Host: Laptop 13 (AMD Ryzen 7040Series) A5 | rather than its | Kernel: 6.7.6-200.fc39.x86_64 | weaknesses. | Uptime: 3 hours, 48 mins | | Packages: 3936 (rpm), 50 (flatpak) | -- Larry Wall in | Shell: bash 5.2.26 | <8225@jpl-devvax.JPL.NAS | Resolution: 2256x1504 \ A.GOV> / DE: Plasma 5.27.10 -------------------------- WM: kwin \ ^__^ Theme: [Plasma], Breeze [GTK2/3] \ (oo)\_______ Icons: [Plasma], breeze [GTK2/3] (__)\ )\/\ Terminal: konsole ||----w | CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7640U w/ Radeon 760M Graphics (12) @ 4.971GHz || || GPU: AMD ATI c1:00.0 Phoenix1 Memory: 4702MiB / 27742MiB

gregors 3y ago

> fortune | cowsay Definitely be careful about using fortune in a corporate environment or public space if you don't know what dat files you are using or you might just get an extremely unwelcome surprise. I was practicing a presentation and used to use fortune all the time. I forget exactly what it output but I remember being absolutely mortified about what could have happened if that had popped up during an internal company tech talk. Kudos to brew for keeping unsuspecting people safe https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/commit/3fb3c4c3e5507a0d4022ec71a81c2358a0fd6ae1 https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/commit/3fb3c4c3e55...