currently writing a joke unix utility as a homage to fortune and cowsay, so it made me wonder whether there are any more fun and/or interesting obscure unix utilities.
Ask HN: What is your favourite Unix 'joke' program or obscure utility?
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Re: Ask HN: What is your favourite Unix 'joke' program or obscure utility?
#2figlet, of course
banner, as the grandparent of figlet and cowsay
lolcat, for colourising their output
pig (from bsd-games), for producing pig latin
dadadodo, jwz's Markov chain nonsense generator from the late 90s that seems eerily prescient in the light of today's LLMs
dissociated-press, a simpler version of dadadodo dating back to the dawn of Emacs
Re: Ask HN: What is your favourite Unix 'joke' program or obscure utility?
#3figlet, of course banner, as the grandparent of figlet and cowsay lolcat, for colourising their output pig (from bsd-games), for producing pig latin dadadodo, jwz's Markov chain nonsense generator from the late 90s that seems eerily prescient in the light of today's LLMs dissociated-press, a simpler version of dadadodo dating back to the dawn of Emacs
okay, banner is a classic, but dadadodo is pretty interesting