What command prints a string as "big ascii text art" in bash?
Solution 1
$ figlet you want figlet _ __ _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ __ ____ _ _ __ | |_ / _(_) __ _| | ___| |_ | | | |/ _ \| | | | \ \ /\ / / _` | '_ \| __| | |_| |/ _` | |/ _ \ __| | |_| | (_) | |_| | \ V V / (_| | | | | |_ | _| | (_| | | __/ |_ \__, |\___/ \__,_| \_/\_/ \__,_|_| |_|\__| |_| |_|\__, |_|\___|\__| |___/ |___/
Solution 2
There's also the old-school command "banner". It is crude but effective.
$ banner banner
###### # # # # # ####### ######
# # # # ## # ## # # # #
# # # # # # # # # # # # #
###### # # # # # # # # ##### ######
# # ####### # # # # # # # # #
# # # # # ## # ## # # #
###### # # # # # # ####### # #
A bit of googling showed me that rpmfind knows where to find it (although rpmfind appears to be having problems themselves these days...)
Solution 3
cowsay
$ cowsay cowsay makes banners
______________________
< cowsay makes banners >
----------------------
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
$ cowsay -f tux cowsay is customisable
________________________
< cowsay is customisable >
------------------------
\
\
.--.
|o_o |
|:_/ |
// \ \
(| | )
/'\_ _/`\
\___)=(___/
cowsay
is amusingly '90s and provides a bunch of options for tweaking the cow's appearance. Read man cowsay
.
It's still packaged for Ubuntu and Debian: sudo apt install cowsay
Solution 4
Toilet is even better. ;) I always used it as code banner for my applications
▞▀▖ ▐ ▜ ▙▗▌ ▗▐
▌ ▙▀▖▌ ▌▞▀▘▜▀ ▝▀▖▐ ▌▘▌▞▀▖▛▀▖▄▜▀ ▞▀▖▙▀▖
▌ ▖▌ ▚▄▌▝▀▖▐ ▖▞▀▌▐ ▌ ▌▌ ▌▌ ▌▐▐ ▖▌ ▌▌
▝▀ ▘ ▗▄▘▀▀ ▀ ▝▀▘ ▘ ▘ ▘▝▀ ▘ ▘▀▘▀ ▝▀ ▘
There's a pretty good write-up of how to use it over on cyberciti.biz, titled: UNIX / Linux: Display Large Colourful Text Banner On Screen
Solution 5
Figlet can do that, and is in the Ubuntu Repos sudo apt-get install figlet
:
"Using Figlet to Spice Up your Scripts" is a recent Linux Journal Article on the Topic.
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raoulsson
CTO at Contovista AG Before: CEO at Zorp Technologies Inc., San Francisco, ...until Google Lens came out... Experienced software engineer and teamlead looking to build/enable useful, delightful, and meaningful products. Passionate, hard-worker interested in contributing to team-oriented, strong engineering cultures. Proven track record of hiring and running successful teams.
Updated on September 17, 2022Comments
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raoulsson over 1 year
I'm looking for a program that turns an ASCII string into something like the "ascii art" below:
.-"^`\ /`^"-. .' ___\ /___ `. / /.---. .---.\ \ | // '-. ___________________________ .-' \\ | | ;| \/--------------------------// |; | \ || |\_) Red Hat (_/| || / \ | \ . \ ; | Enterprise Linux || ; / . / | / '\_\ \\ \ \ \ | ||/ / / // /_/' \\ \ \ \| Server Release 5.3 |/ / / // `'-\_\_\ Codename Tikanga /_/_/-'` '--------------------------'
I don't have a matching example but I would like the string be turned into some multi line text, like:
__ __ / | / | | | | | | |--| | | |--| | | | | | |_/ |_/
for the letter
H
and so on... I would like to use this to show certain warning messages, for example when the user is about to run a script that will delete the production database and so on...Thanks!
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Kyle Brandt over 14 yearsToo sloooow :-)
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chris over 14 yearsMaybe just too small?
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Spence over 14 years+1 - Oh, how I love figlet. Proportional fonts SUCK...
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davey over 14 yearsThere's a web front end for figlet at: bigtext.org
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Des Horsley over 6 yearsbigtext.org seems to be no more
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Brad Parks almost 6 yearsthis works on osx using homebrew too!
brew install figlet
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nathanfranke over 3 yearsIf you would like the man page to be read by a cow, check
man cowsay | cowsay
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artbn about 3 yearsi purposely logged in just to upvote this!!!!!