How can I make ascii-banners from the command line?

Question

I've seen people using the terminal command: banner. This creates big ascii-art-style text.

When I try to run it, however, the terminal says it doesn't exist. Why?

How do I install it? Are there any alternatives?

Oli · Answer 1 · 2013-12-17T13:38:57.170

38

I've always preferred figlet for big writing. Something about it preserves the character shape better. A bit subjective but there you go. Simple enough:

$ sudo apt-get install figlet
$ figlet oh hai!
       _       _           _ _ 
  ___ | |__   | |__   __ _(_) |
 / _ \| '_ \  | '_ \ / _` | | |
| (_) | | | | | | | | (_| | |_|
 \___/|_| |_| |_| |_|\__,_|_(_)

(It looks better in a terminal than it does here)

There are a ton of formatting options too that make it suitable for lots of different situations. It does this through "fonts" (standard, slant, shadow, small, smslant, bubble, digital, mini, etc). man figlet has a full listing of available styles and formatting options but here are a few examples:

$ figlet -f slant Hooah!
    __  __                  __    __
   / / / /___  ____  ____ _/ /_  / /
  / /_/ / __ \/ __ \/ __ `/ __ \/ / 
 / __  / /_/ / /_/ / /_/ / / / /_/  
/_/ /_/\____/\____/\__,_/_/ /_(_)   

$ figlet -f smslant Hooah!
   __ __               __   __
  / // /__  ___  ___ _/ /  / /
 / _  / _ \/ _ \/ _ `/ _ \/_/ 
/_//_/\___/\___/\_,_/_//_(_)  

$ figlet -f bubble Hooah!
  _   _   _   _   _   _  
 / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ 
( H | o | o | a | h | ! )
 \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ 

$ figlet -f mini Hooah!

|_| _  _  _.|_ | 
| |(_)(_)(_|| |o

edited Dec 17 '13 at 13:38

answered Dec 17 '13 at 13:31

Oli

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Both of you used the same command at the same time , so cant decide whose first. Any way Thank you for answering. +1 – Raja G Dec 17 '13 at 13:40
look at my new answer , you can find something really cool – Raja G Dec 17 '13 at 14:05
You are a treasure-trove of knowledge! Installed 190 KB package... ;-) – Fabby Feb 02 '15 at 16:05
figlet usually comes packaged with the `showfigfonts` tool that output font samples. – Arnaud Meuret Jan 11 '20 at 10:48
Figlet doesn't seem to be available on WLS :/ `apt search figlet` gives me nothing – Marco Panichi Nov 26 '22 at 10:38
1

@MarcoPanichi It's in the Ubuntu "universe" repo. I'm not sure if that's enabled on WLS but if it's not, run `sudo add-apt-repository universe`, update and try again. – Oli Nov 27 '22 at 23:19
Thank you @Oli, I solved doing `apt update` – Marco Panichi Nov 28 '22 at 10:40

score 18 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 18 '13 at 09:19

18

You need to install it before you can use it. Type in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install sysvbanner

This Package is not available in the standard installation and for this is why you have to install it manually.

edited Apr 18 '13 at 09:19

Radu Rădeanu

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answered Apr 18 '13 at 08:56

prophecy201

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score 15 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 17 '13 at 13:31

15

If you wish to use other "fonts" / ASCII art for a banner, you could also look at figlet:

sudo apt-get install figlet

foo@bar:~$ figlet
hi
 _     _
| |__ (_)
| '_ \| |
| | | | |
|_| |_|_|

cheers

sc.

answered Dec 17 '13 at 13:31

swisscheese

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Both of you used the same command at the same time , so cant decide whose first. Any way Thank you for answering. +1 – Raja G Dec 17 '13 at 13:40
1

does he look like he needs the points? ;-) – swisscheese Dec 17 '13 at 13:43
1

look at my new answer you can find something really cool\ – Raja G Dec 17 '13 at 14:05
http://patorjk.com/software/taag/#p=testall&f=Graffiti&t=Test for figlets... – Amos Folarin May 01 '15 at 09:48

score 14 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 17 '13 at 14:04

14

Found one more named as toilet.

sudo apt-get install toilet

Then run

toilet -f bigmono9 -F gay <your string>

For Example:

enter image description here

answered Dec 17 '13 at 14:04

Raja G

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1

that's a good suggestion, had never heard of that. thanks. – swisscheese Dec 17 '13 at 14:15
1

looks like toilet-paper to me. Colorful at that. – RPiAwesomeness Dec 17 '13 at 14:24

score 5 · Answer 5 · edited May 03 '18 at 18:21

5

Alternative (without installing anything)

Go to https://duckduckgo.com
In search bar type: figlet YOUR BANNER HERE
Copy the figlet and use it in the Bash script

Example Bash code:

#!/bin/bash

printf "
    YOUR FIGLET BANNER HERE
"

edited May 03 '18 at 18:21

Melebius

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answered May 03 '18 at 18:04

Krishna Torque

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Raja G · Answer 6 · 2013-12-17T13:37:59.723

4

Open your terminal and paste as

 sudo apt-get install sysvbanner

Usage:

 banner <yourstring>

Example:

enter code here

edited Dec 17 '13 at 13:37

answered Dec 17 '13 at 13:18

Raja G

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Intersting, what would I be used for? Just wondering... – RPiAwesomeness Dec 17 '13 at 13:39
@RPiAwesomeness where ever you want , for example in bash scripts # stands for commenting & there you can have your identity. – Raja G Dec 17 '13 at 13:42
1

@RPiAwesomeness printers! We used to use this to create banners for printers and put some fancy info on the 1st page. – Rinzwind Dec 17 '13 at 15:14
I'm a fan of the sysvbanner source. its 160 lines of C, and most of that is an array of 7x8 glyphs. you or anyone could simply make an alternate. I just moded the underscore to be blank, and the max line length to be 20, then I can write longer banners with underscores showing up as spaces. I wonder if I can feed it ascii arts like nyancat to make Huge nyancat banners. – j0h Jul 20 '21 at 20:16

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Dec 17 '13 at 13:57

Another (longer) option that might be helpful if there's any nodejs involvement is ascii-banner. It's a node library but it can be scripted out.

$ sudo apt-get install npm
$ sudo npm -g install ascii-banner
$ node -e "var AsciiBanner = require('ascii-banner');AsciiBanner.write('Oh hai').out();"
  ______    __    __      __    __       ___       __  
 /  __  \  |  |  |  |    |  |  |  |     /   \     |  | 
|  |  |  | |  |__|  |    |  |__|  |    /  ^  \    |  | 
|  |  |  | |   __   |    |   __   |   /  /_\  \   |  | 
|  `--'  | |  |  |  |    |  |  |  |  /  _____  \  |  | 
 \______/  |__|  |__|    |__|  |__| /__/     \__\ |__|

It also has font options:

$ node -e "require('ascii-banner').write('Oh hai').font('Thin').out();"

,---.|        |         o
|   ||---.    |---.,---..
|   ||   |    |   |,---||
`---'`   '    `   '`---^`

https://npmjs.org/package/ascii-banner#readme — `.color(...)` and alignment and `before(...)` and `after(...)` (again, with alignment and colour) arguments. — Oli, Dec 17 '13 at 14:04

How can I make ascii-banners from the command line?

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