cowsay 3.03

cowsay is a configurable talking cow, written in Perl. It operates much as the figlet program does, and it written in the same spirit of silliness.

cowsay is actually a pretty old program. It has not really been released before, and I am releasing it in the hope that someone other than myself will be amused by it.

The first major version of cowsay had one cow and one message template: $foo is $verb $bar. Not very flexible, but people managed to do pretty interesting things with it. The second major version scrapped many of the limitations of the first, by allowing arbitrary messages, multiple cowfiles, and even support for cows talking in figlet. The third version was a rewrite of the second into Perl 5, whereupon the code got a lot smaller and more manageable. :-)

If you are using Perl 5.004, you may have problems with Text::Wrap. (Yeesh, this module changes more than it should...) I've included a diff for the Text::Wrap (version 97.011701) that is shipped with 5.004_04; the concept is simple enough that even older Perls can take advantage of this silly little patch; if there is a "sub fill" in the documentation for the module, copy it to a more useful section of that file. If not, just take "sub fill" wholesale from the patch. Oh, and consider upgrading to 5.005_03 or later. Please. You'll like it, I promise.

To install cowsay, consult the INSTALL file in this directory.

For the terms and conditions of use, consult the LICENSE file in this directory.

• Tony Monroe (tony@nog.net)

$Id: README,v 1.3 2000/05/28 06:24:46 tony Exp $