cowsay man page on DragonFly

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cowsay(1)							     cowsay(1)

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 mes‐
       sage 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 custom‐
       ize 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	 back‐
       slashes	must  be reduplicated to prevent interpolation.	 The name of a
       cowfile should end with .cow, otherwise it is assumed not to be a  cow‐
       file.   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 3.02 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/local/share/cows  directory,  or  at least a directory with a file
       called default.cow in it.

FILES
       /wrkdirs/games/cowsay/work/stage/usr/local/share/cows  holds  a	sample
       set  of	cowfiles.  If your COWPATH is not explicitly set, it automati‐
       cally 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).

SEE ALSO
       perl(1), wall(1), nwrite(1), figlet(6)

			 $Date: 1999/11/04 19:50:40 $		     cowsay(1)
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