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Lolcat is a command-line tool that colorizes terminal output by printing text in rainbow gradients. Inspired by the original Ruby “lolcat” project, it takes input from stdin or files and outputs the same text with colorful ANSI escape codes. It’s frequently used to add a playful touch to logs, help messages, or shell scripts, making otherwise mundane terminal output more fun. Options allow customizing color spread, speed, and randomization to create different rainbow effects. Lolcat is often piped into commands like cat, figlet, or fortune to create whimsical and eye-catching console art. Despite being lighthearted in purpose, it demonstrates the use of ANSI codes and stream manipulation in a clean, portable way.
Features
- Rainbow / gradient colorization of text output to terminal when displaying files or piped input
- Optional animation of the color gradients as output is displayed
- Supports reading from files or standard input (pipe) like cat
- Configurable parameters (speed, seed, color range, etc.) for adjusting appearance
- Availability via common package managers (gem, Homebrew, Snap etc.) for ease of installation
- Works even when piping output (preserving or not preserving ANSI color codes) under TTY detection etc.
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Categories
TerminalsLicense
BSD LicenseFollow Lolcat
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