cowsay/cowthink - configurable speaking/thinking cow (and a bit more)

       Tony   Monroe   (tony@nog.net),   with  suggestions  from  Shannon  Appel  (appel@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU)  and
       contributions from Anthony Polito (aspolito@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU).

       If there are any, please notify the author at the address below.

       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.

       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 customize 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 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.

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  -W40  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.

       The COWPATH environment variable, if present, will be used to search for cowfiles.  It contains a  colon-
       separated   list   of   directories,   much   like  PATHorMANPATH.   It  should  always  contain  the
       /usr/share/cowsay/cows directory, or at least a directory with a file called default.cow in it.

/usr/share/cowsay/cows holds a sample set of cowfiles.   If  your  COWPATH  is  not  explicitly  set,  it
       automatically contains this directory.

       cowsay/cowthink - configurable speaking/thinking cow (and a bit more)

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

                                          $Date: 1999/11/04 19:50:40 $                                 COWSAY(6)

       cowsay [-eeye_string] [-fcowfile] [-h] [-l] [-n] [-Ttongue_string] [-Wcolumn] [-bdgpstwy]