cowsay(6)							   Games Manual 							 cowsay(6)

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 message 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 cus-
       tomize 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 bal-
       loon is composed of the character(s) in the $thoughts variable.	Any backslashes must be reduplicated to prevent interpolation.	 The  name
       of a cowfile should end with .cow, otherwise it is assumed not to be a cowfile.	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 3.03 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/share/cowsay/cows  directory,	or  at	least  a  directory  with  a  file  called
       default.cow in it.

FILES

       /usr/share/cowsay/cows holds a sample set of cowfiles.  If your COWPATH is not explicitly set, it automatically 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(6)