cowsay

cran checks

What is this?

If you are familiar with cowsay on the cli, then you know what this is, but for R. If not, read below. Why? Why not?

History

cowsay was originally written by Tony Monroe, with the first code released in 1999. The version of cowsay you get via homebrew is a fork by Andrew Janke at https://cowsay.diamonds/ (code repo). The code for the original can be found at tnalpgge/rank-amateur-cowsay and the original website can be seen on the Wayback Machine. Both the original and version by Janke are both written in Perl. The cowsay you get with apt on Linux machines is the last version Monroe released in 2016 (v3.0.4 or possibly v3.0.3).

This R package has some additional features the orginal cowsay doesn't have, but also lacks some features the original has. This package doesn't yet support custom eyes and tongue for the cow or any other animals.

Contributors (alphabetical)

Amanda Dobbyn
Andreas Brandmaier
Andy Teucher
Carson Sievert
David Schoch
Franz-Sebastian Krah
Guangchuang Yu
Karl Broman
Kiyoko Gotanda
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan
Marion Louveaux
Noam Ross
Paolo Sonego
Philipp Boersch-Supan
Rich FitzJohn
Scott Chamberlain
Thomas Leeper
Tyler Rinker

That's right, it takes 18 people to make cowsay - it's that hard.

Contributing

See [CONTRIBUTING.md][contrib]

Where to find ASCII animal art

Sources to look in:

https://asciiart.website/ - again, this person only collects them - no mention of license, permissions, etc.

Permissions

In the ascii art mailing list https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt.ascii-art they say:

 As for posting other people's ASCII art,
    after a discussion in news:alt.ascii-art       _     ___
    the following rules were agreed upon:         #_~`--'__ `===-,
    1.  If an ASCII ART picture has initials      `.`.     `#.,//
        on it, leave them on when posting it      ,_\_\     ## #\
    2.  If an ASCII ART picture doesn't have      `__.__    `####\
        initials on it,  mention  that  you            ~~\ ,###'~
        didn't  draw  it  when  posting  it.              \##'
    3.  If somebody  posts a picture without                  [nosig]
        initials and you have an original copy
        with initials on, feel free to re-post the original version.
        *   The re-post ought not to be taken personally, as we all
            know that ASCII art often loses proper credits.
            Responses to the re-post are not necessary.

    One contributor, name of Krogg, suggested the following:

    1.) Ultra polite:...ya make yer own ascii and use it.
    2.)  Very polite:...Ya contact the author and ask if ya
                        can use it...
    3.)       polite:...Ya use it but you keep the Credits
                        in there like they should be.
    4.)         rude:...Ya use it and strip credits.
    5.)    Very rude:...Ya use it and claim that it Is
                        _Your_ very own creation...

So, let's go with this rule: Let's include found (on the web) ascii art in this pkg, include signature if there, and if no signature, put in a [nosig] (see above).

Quick watch start

Asciicast: https://asciinema.org/a/7745

Install

From CRAN

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("cowsay")

Dev version

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("sckott/cowsay")

library("cowsay")

The animals

sort(animals)
#>  [1] "alligator"    "ant"          "anxiouscat"   "bat"          "bat2"        
#>  [6] "beavis"       "behindcat"    "bigcat"       "blowfish"     "buffalo"     
#> [11] "cat"          "chicken"      "chuck"        "clippy"       "cow"         
#> [16] "cow_borg"     "cow_dead"     "cow_greedy"   "cow_sleepy"   "cow_tired"   
#> [21] "cow_wired"    "cow_young"    "daemon"       "dragon"       "duck"        
#> [26] "duckling"     "egret"        "endlesshorse" "facecat"      "fish"        
#> [31] "frog"         "ghost"        "goldfish"     "grumpycat"    "hypnotoad"   
#> [36] "longcat"      "longtailcat"  "monkey"       "mushroom"     "owl"         
#> [41] "pig"          "poop"         "pumpkin"      "rabbit"       "shark"       
#> [46] "shortcat"     "signbunny"    "smallcat"     "snowman"      "spider"      
#> [51] "squirrel"     "squirrel2"    "stegosaurus"  "stretchycat"  "trilobite"   
#> [56] "turkey"       "whale"        "wolf"         "yoda"

Say Something

say("time")
#> 
#>  ____________________________ 
#> < 2025-10-28 22:36:13.574411 >
#>  ---------------------------- 
#>       \
#>        \
#> 
#>         ^__^ 
#>         (oo)\ ________ 
#>         (__)\         )\ /\ 
#>              ||------w|
#>              ||      ||

say("ain't that some shit", "chicken")
#> 
#>  ______________________ 
#> < ain't that some shit >
#>  ---------------------- 
#>       \
#>        \
#>          _
#>        _/ }
#>       `>' \
#>       `|   \
#>        |   /'-.     .-.
#>         \'     ';`--' .'
#>          \'.    `'-./
#>           '.`-..-;`
#>             `;-..'
#>             _| _|
#>             /` /` [nosig]

Add some color:

library(crayon)

say("boo!", "ghost", what_color = "cyan", by_color = "saddlebrown")

say(
  "I love hooo you are!",
  "owl",
  what_color = rgb(0, 1, 1),
  by_color = "#FF0000"
)

String styles together crayon-style:

say(
  what = "rms",
  by = "rms",
  what_color = yellow$bgMagenta$bold,
  by_color = cyan$italic
)

This doesn't preclude you from adding extra crayon colors to your what string directly - but the results are not super pretty:

say(
  what = paste0("hello ", crayon::yellow("there "), crayon::underline("world")),
  by = "trilobite"
)

Vary type of output, default calls message()

say("hell no!")
#> 
#>  __________ 
#> < hell no! >
#>  ---------- 
#>       \
#>        \
#> 
#>         ^__^ 
#>         (oo)\ ________ 
#>         (__)\         )\ /\ 
#>              ||------w|
#>              ||      ||

say("hell no!", type = "warning")
#> Warning in say("hell no!", type = "warning"): 
#>  __________ 
#> < hell no! >
#>  ---------- 
#>       \
#>        \
#> 
#>         ^__^ 
#>         (oo)\ ________ 
#>         (__)\         )\ /\ 
#>              ||------w|
#>              ||      ||

say("hell no!", type = "string")
#> [1] "\n __________ \n< hell no! >\n ---------- \n      \\\n       \\\n\n        ^__^ \n        (oo)\\ ________ \n        (__)\\         )\\ /\\ \n             ||------w|\n             ||      ||"

Long cat

From the a Boing Boing tweet on 2014-05-10 "twitter.com/BoingBoing/status/465170473194512384" (post may be gone)

say("it's caturday", "longcat")
#> 
#>  _______________ 
#> < it's caturday >
#>  --------------- 
#>  \
#>   \
#> 
#>     .ﾊ,,ﾊ
#>     ( ﾟωﾟ)
#>     |つ  つ
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     |    |
#>     U "  U
#>         [BoingBoing]

Grumpy cat

say("NO!", by = "grumpycat")
#> 
#>  _____ 
#> < NO! >
#>  ----- 
#>      \
#>       \
#> 
#>       ﾊ _ ﾊ
#>       ಠ X ಠ

say("WOKE UP TODAY, IT WAS TERRIBLE", by = "grumpycat")
#> 
#>  ________________________________ 
#> < WOKE UP TODAY, IT WAS TERRIBLE >
#>  -------------------------------- 
#>      \
#>       \
#> 
#>       ﾊ _ ﾊ
#>       ಠ X ಠ

say("I HAD FUN ONCE, IT WAS AWFUL", by = "grumpycat")
#> 
#>  ______________________________ 
#> < I HAD FUN ONCE, IT WAS AWFUL >
#>  ------------------------------ 
#>      \
#>       \
#> 
#>       ﾊ _ ﾊ
#>       ಠ X ಠ

Bunny Holding a sign

say(by = "signbunny")
#> 
#>  ______________ 
#> < Hello world! >
#>  -------------- 
#> \
#> \
#> 
#> (\__/) ||
#> (•ㅅ•) ||
#> /   づ
#>           [nosig]

Fish

say(by = "fish")
#> 
#>  ______________ 
#> < Hello world! >
#>  -------------- 
#>        \
#>         \
#> 
#>   ><((((º>  ><((((º>  ><((((º>  ><((((º>  ><((((º>
#>       Kiyoko Gotanda

R fortunes

library(fortunes)
say("fortune", "cat")
#> 
#>  _________________________________________________________ 
#> / I'll go back to lurking in the daily R-Helps and not    \
#> | ask any more questions until I've read all the old      |
#> | R-help messages. I'm working on December 1998 right now |
#> | and reading forward. Perhaps by next year I'll will     |
#> | have read all the old R-help postings and I'll dare ask |
#> | another question then.  Earl F. Glynn R-help January    |
#> \ 2012                                                    /
#>  ------------------------------------

Cowsay

Install / Use

README