The banner program displays a large ASCII art version of input text. It is commonly included in Unix and Unix-like operating systems. There are two common varieties: one, which prints text horizontally for display to a terminal, and another which prints text in much larger letters for output to a line printer.

A related, and more flexible, program is figlet, which can display text in different fonts and orientations.

Implementations

A partial list of implementations:

• By AT&T, in UNIX System V.http://www.zen77087.zen.co.uk/nug/alleg/sysv-aix-dynix.shtmlhttp://www.zen77087.zen.co.uk/nug/doc/IBM-157-28-E.pdf
• By Cedar Solutions. Runs on modern Linux systems as of 2008. Prints horizontally only with a fixed size.http://cedar-solutions.com/software/utilities.htmlhttp://freshmeat.net/projects/banner/
• By Mark Horton at the University of California Berkely, distributed as part of the bsd-games package. Runs of modern Linux, GNU Hurd and Mac OS X systems as of 2008. Prints vertically with variable size font.http://packages.debian.org/stable/games/bsdgames

Example output

From the terminal-oriented banner program: $ banner Hello! # # ### # # ###### # # #### ### # # # # # # # ### ####### ##### # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ### # # ###### ###### ###### #### ###

One letter from the printer-oriented banner program in Mac OS X:

$ banner -w80 "a"
                         #####
                       ######### 
                    ###############        ###
                   ################      ###### 
                  ##################     ######## 
                  #####         #####    #########
                  ####           ####      ##  ### 
                  ###            ####           ## 
                  ###            ###            ## 
                  ###            ###           ### 
                   ####         ###           #### 
                     #############################
                   ############################## 
                  ############################## 
                  ############################ 
                  ########################### 
                  ### 
                  # 
                  #

See also

• List of Unix programs

ru:Banner