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Banner Generator

I was writing an installation script today, and wanted to have a large banner displaying the product name as part of it. I fondly remember the UNIX banner command, where you could type "banner sumner" and get something like this:

######  ##     ## ##     ## ##    ## ######## ########
##   ## ##     ## ###   ### ###   ## ##       ##     ##
##      ##     ## #### #### ####  ## ##       ##     ##
######  ##     ## ## ### ## ## ## ## ######   ########
     ## ##     ## ##     ## ##  #### ##       ##   ##
##   ## ##     ## ##     ## ##   ### ##       ##    ##
######   #######  ##     ## ##    ## ######## ##     ##
So I SSH'ed into a Linux machine to try to get the same result quickly & easily. No dice! Not to be deterred, I hit up Google and got this link: http://www.network-science.de/ascii/

Not only can I generate a banner as I did above, but you can get all kinds of fancy, like this:

___ _   _ _ __ ___  _ __   ___ _ __
/ __| | | | '_ ` _ \| '_ \ / _ \ '__|
\__ \ |_| | | | | | | | | |  __/ |
|___/\__,_|_| |_| |_|_| |_|\___|_|

Or this: 

   _______  ______ ___  ____  ___  _____
  / ___/ / / / __ `__ \/ __ \/ _ \/ ___/
 (__  ) /_/ / / / / / / / / /  __/ /
/____/\__,_/_/ /_/ /_/_/ /_/\___/_/

Or even this:

.d8888b  888  888 88888b.d88b.  88888b.   .d88b.  888d888
88K      888  888 888 "888 "88b 888 "88b d8P  Y8b 888P"
"Y8888b. 888  888 888  888  888 888  888 88888888 888
     X88 Y88b 888 888  888  888 888  888 Y8b.     888
 88888P'  "Y88888 888  888  888 888  888  "Y8888  888

Clearly, some of these are better than others, but I'm happy that there's a quick & easy way to create banners without a UNIX box!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Banner was probably in an optional package that the admin didn't install on that machine. On Slackware, it is in the bsd-games collection for example. It even comes with cygwin. But the tool you found is nicer, anyway :-)
May 24, 2006 at 2:45 AM
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