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 mes-
sage 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 rela-
tive 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.