Another in the “Fun with Unix” series (see the one other post so far on mesg), today’s episode covers a little trick that goes alongside messages.

Here it is:

 _______
< hello >
 -------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

The code to output the above is:

echo "hello" | cowsay

You can tell cowsay to use a different picture, how about this one:

 echo “hello” | cowsay -f elephant
_______
< hello >
———-
\ /\ ___ /\
\ // \/ \/ \\
(( O O ))
\\ / \ //
\/ | | \/
| | | |
| | | |
| o |
| | | |
|m| |m|

Or even:

 
echo “hello” | cowsay -f daemon
_______

< hello >
———-
\ , ,
\ /( )`
\ \ \___ / |
/- _ `-/ ‘
(/\/ \ \ /\
/ / | ` \
O O ) / |
`-^—’`< ‘
(_.) _ ) /
`.___/` /
`——-’ /

<——. __ / __ \

<——|====O)))==) \) /====

<——’ `—’ `.__,’ \
| |
\ /
______( (_ / \______
,’ ,——-’ | \
`—{__________) \/
 

My files are in /usr/share/cowsay/cows so have a look what you have.

Of course you can use these in conjunction with write that I mentioned last time, by using something like:

echo "hello there" | cowsay -f hellokitty | write kevin

Enjoy :)