viernes, 31 de mayo de 2013

There's a Cat in My Linux Computer!

Some days ago, Mechatotoro taught me steganography (how to hide compressed files into images.) 

I was impressed to see how easy and fun that was!

Also, I learned that for doing it in Linux, you use the command "cat".

To be honest, I had used the command "cat" before.  However, my use of this command has been mainly to play jokes.  The one of the talking cat is my favorite.  Basically, children (and some adults) get amazed to see this little feline talking from my CLI.

1. You type "cat hello" and you get this:

2. You type "cat identify_yourself" and the cat responds this:

3. You tell something nice to the cat by typing "cat you_are_cute" and the feline answers:
So much for cat humbleness, huh? Cats are like that!

4. Finally, it's time to say good-bye. You type "cat bye" and you get this:
It's quite fun!

What's the trick? For those who haven't figured it out by now, the trick is basically creating four simple text files named "hello", "identify_yourself", "you_are_cute", and "bye", all without specifying any extension for the files.  You draw the ASCII cat in each file and type whatever you want the "cat" to say. Whenever you type "cat" in the terminal, the command displays the content of each file. That's it!

The command "cat" can do very important tasks...but little things like this, besides providing some fun, help people lose their fear of the command line. Who knows? A kid might get interested in programming because of this!




4 comentarios:

  1. So that's how you do it!
    That CAT trick is really something. It was great to see how people get impressed by the cute ASCII cat today ;-)

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    1. Hehe! It was fun to see that young woman say "I've fallen in love!" when she saw the little ASCII cat, right? :P

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  2. hehe sounds to me you guys want to get into programming. Good post. Keep them coming!

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    1. In my times, I used to program with BASIC, but all that is already forgotten. I'd like to take up programming eventually :)

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