September 19, 2008 in UNIX, Open Source | 8 Comments
Indeed, there are many easter eggs inside your Terminal, but I believe these Terminal command lines will make you smile as it's really fun to play around with. And for some, I am sure you've never seen them before.
Birth Token
cat /usr/share/misc/birthtoken | grep [month]
This Terminal command line will show you what is the birth flower and birth stone for the given birth month, instantly.
$cat /usr/share/misc/birthtoken | grep Jan January:Garnet:Carnation
Meaning of Flowers
cat /usr/share/misc/flowers | grep -i [flower-name]
Do you know that Camelia means reflected loveliness? Terminal knows it.
$cat /usr/share/misc/flowers | grep -i Clover Clover:Be mine.
Milestones in Music
cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music | grep [month/date]
Show you the date of birth of milestones in music related to the given month and date parameter.
$cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music | grep 01/10 01/10 Blues guitarist Howlin' Wolf dies in Chicago, 1976 01/10 Jim Croce is born in Philadelphia, 1943 01/10 Pat Benatar is born in Long Island, 1952 01/10 Rod Stewart is born in Glasgow, Scotland, 1945
Proper Names
cat /usr/share/dict/propernames | grep [portion-of-name]
This command line, if executed, will return you completed names from the give portion of name. Whether it's proper or not, I doubt.
$cat /usr/share/dict/propernames | grep Te Ted Teresa Teri Teriann Terrance Terrence Terri Terry Teruyuki
Birthdays
cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.birthday | grep [month/date] cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.birthday | grep [name]
This particular Terminal command line will show you the birthdays of some famous people. Not so breaking though, I can't even find Steve Jobs and Bill Gates birthdays inside.
$cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.birthday | grep 09/16 09/16 Allen Funt born in Brooklyn, NY, 1914 $cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.birthday | grep Steve 07/25 Steve Goodman is born in Chicago, 1948 11/13 Robert Louis Stevenson born, 1850
Extra
Thanks to reader James Hindle for pointing out that we can see today's music, history, computer and birthday everytime we open up our Terminal, here is how to do it:
- Open Terminal and type vim ~/.bash_profile
- Press character i to go to Insert Mode
-
Insert the Terminal commands
today=`date "+%m/%d"` grep $today /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music grep $today /usr/share/calendar/calendar.history grep $today /usr/share/calendar/calendar.computer grep $today /usr/share/calendar/calendar.birthday
- Quit Insert Mode by pressing Escape key
- Type :wq to save the changes to the file and exit vim mode
- Relaunch your Terminal and now you should be able to see the changes
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8 Comments
James Hindle
If you put the following in ~/bash_profile, every time you open a terminal window it will print today's birthdays, and world, music and computer history milestones: today=`date "+%m/%d"` grep $today /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music grep $today /usr/share/calendar/calendar.history grep $today /usr/share/calendar/calendar.computer grep $today /usr/share/calendar/calendar.birthday
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Wendy <Webmaster>
Thanks for that James. I will plug it to the article.
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Jeff Jolley
There is a command-line program to get the calendar stuff out: /usr/bin/calendar. Normally, you do "calendar -f {calendar-file}", so:
calendar -f calendar.music
will give you the music calendar. It will also automatically do stuff like, if today is Friday, it will show you Saturday and Sunday's calendar events so you won't miss them over the weekend when you're not at work. It's very cool. You can customize how you want your calendars to work by copying the calendars from the /usr/share/calendar directory to the ~/.calendar director. (You will have to create that directory, of course). "man calendar" for more information.
I find it easiest to combine calendars (music/usholidays/birthdays) into one calendar in my home directory and adding a custom calendar directive into my .profile. View /usr/share/calendar/calendar.all to see how to combine calendars.
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Ben
Hey, so i tried using James' little extra, BUT by accident I forgot to put a space between date and the first ", and now whenever I open up Terminal it only displays the Last login info and then the following: -bash: date"+%,/%d" : No such file or directory and then blank, and I can't enter any code. Please help!!
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Zach
just hold ctrl and click c
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Miji
I got a few : emacs *enter* *F10* *t* *g* *select a game from the list of games* telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl say Hi, I'm a mac
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Ajan
hey I tried the SUDO command to try putting a message on the Login window, though I cancelled it as soon as I copy pasted the command.. Now my Terminal window Looks like this http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u39/ajan011/Picture3.png , I tried resetting the look of the terminal in preferences by changing it to default (I'm using a 10.5.6). I can't see my user name now. And everytime I try writing something, it doesn't show it (as if its written in white). Tried removing the plist and reinstalling terminal. Still no,change. Help me out guys..
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Goomba4001
I've been looking around usr/share/ for a bit, and I found some goodies: Richard Stallman Interview (WTF? XD): cat /usr/share/emacs/22.1/etc/INTERVIEW How to say "Hello" in every language: cat /usr/share/emacs/22.1/etc/HELLO Some cheesey GNU puns, EMACS acronyms, and some funny developers dialogue: cat /usr/share/emacs/22.1/etc/JOKES (I personally love it when one of the writers gets irritated with the bash, and tells it to "eat flaming death") Strange article on motivation and rewards. And why is this on my Mac...? cat /usr/share/emacs/22.1/etc/MOTIVATION OH MY GOSH. What the hell is wrong with these people? XD cat /usr/share/emacs/22.1/etc/sex.6 Bizarrity. cat /usr/share/emacs/22.1/yow.lines
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