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cowsay is a configurable talking cow, written in Perl. It draws an ASCII cow with a speech balloon (or a think balloon) saying whatever pithy comment you give it on the command line. The program requires Perl 5.005_03 or newer. Debian Weekly News calls cowsay "an absolutely vital program for turning text into happy ASCII cows". So there you go; you need it.
According to the manpage, there are several command-line options to change the apparance of the cow:
You can also pass in characters for the eyes and tongue, use any of 47 supplied cowfiles (not all of which are cows), or create your own cowfile. A cowfile is a Perl script ending in .cow. The script contains a variable $the_cow containing a picture of the cow. Remember to backslash your "@"'s!
- -b
- Borg
- -d
- dead
- -g
- greedy
- -p
- paranoid
- -s
- stoned
- -t
- tired
- -w
- wired (opposite of tired)
- -y
- youthful
For those who can't wait to see the cows, here are some screenshots:
Script started on Fri May 25 11:56:46 2001
$ cowsay "Hello, bovine world! "
_______________________
< Hello, bovine world! >
-----------------------
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
$ cowsay -b "Hello, bovine world! "
_______________________
< Hello, bovine world! >
-----------------------
\ ^__^
\ (==)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
$ M="Hello, bovine world\!"
$ cowsay -d $M
______________________
< Hello, bovine world! >
----------------------
\ ^__^
\ (xx)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
U ||----w |
|| ||
$ cowsay -p $M
______________________
< Hello, bovine world! >
----------------------
\ ^__^
\ (@@)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
$ cowsay -s $M
______________________
< Hello, bovine world! >
----------------------
\ ^__^
\ (**)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
U ||----w |
|| ||
$ cowsay -y $M
______________________
< Hello, bovine world! >
----------------------
\ ^__^
\ (..)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
$ cowsay -f tux $M
_______________________
< Hello, bovine world! >
-----------------------
\
\
.--.
|o_o |
|:_/ |
// \ \
(| | )
/'\_ _/`\
\___)=(___/
$ cowsay -f dragon $M
_______________________
< Hello, bovine world! >
-----------------------
\ / \ //\
\ |\___/| / \// \\
/0 0 \__ / // | \ \
/ / \/_/ // | \ \
@_^_@'/ \/_ // | \ \
//_^_/ \/_ // | \ \
( //) | \/// | \ \
( / /) _|_ / ) // | \ _\
( // /) '/,_ _ _/ ( ; -. | _ _\.-~ .-~~~^-.
(( / / )) ,-{ _ `-.|.-~-. .~ `.
(( // / )) '/\ / ~-. _ .-~ .-~^-. \
(( /// )) `. { } / \ \
(( / )) .----~-.\ \-' .~ \ `. \^-.
///.----..> \ _ -~ `. ^-` ^-_
///-._ _ _ _ _ _ _}^ - - - - ~ ~-- ,.-~
/.-~
$
Script done on Fri May 25 11:59:03 2001
I like that dragon, BTW.
Find cowsay at http://www.nog.net/~tony/warez/cowsay.shtml or in the unstable branch of your nearest Debian mirror, in section "games". (PS. The author's site has a link to the Cows with Guns site, which has a shadow image of, er, two cows with guns saying, "Four legs good. Two legs bad," from Orwell's Animal Farm. I wonder if Eric Raymond would approve? 
Mike Orr