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 :)