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FIGlet
Program for making large letters out of ordinary text

FIGlet is a computer program that generates text banners, in a variety of typefaces, composed of letters made up of conglomerations of smaller ASCII characters (see ASCII art). The name derives from "Frank, Ian and Glenn's letters".

Being free software, FIGlet is commonly included as part of many Unix-like operating systems (Linux, BSD, etc.) distributions, but it has been ported to other platforms as well. The official FIGlet FTP site includes precompiled ports for the Acorn, Amiga, Apple II, Atari ST, BeOS, Mac, MS-DOS, NeXTSTEP, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows, as well as a reimplementation in Perl (Text::FIGlet). There are third-party reimplementations of FIGlet in Java (including one embedded in the JavE ASCII art editor), JavaScript, PHP, Python, and Go. DuckDuckgo also has their own Figlet version, to be able to use it you need to type "Figlet [text]" and you can easily Copy & Paste everywhere

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Behavior

FIGlet can read from standard input or accept a message as part of the command line. It prints to standard output. Some common arguments (options) are:

  • -f to select a font file. (font files are available here)
  • -d to change the directory for fonts.
  • -c centers the output.
  • -l left-aligns the output.
  • -r right-aligns the output.
  • -t sets the output width to the terminal width.
  • -w specifies a custom output width.
  • -k enables kerning, printing each letter of the message individually, instead of merged into the adjacent letters.

Sample usage

An example of output generated by FIGlet is shown below.

[user@hostname ~]$ figlet 7MO __ ___ _ _ _ _ \ \ / (_) | _(_)_ __ ___ __| (_) __ _ \ \ /\ / /| | |/ / | '_ \ / _ \/ _` | |/ _` | \ V V / | | <| | |_) | __/ (_| | | (_| | \_/\_/ |_|_|\_\_| .__/ \___|\__,_|_|\__,_| |_|

The following command:

[user@hostname ~]$ figlet -ct -f roman Wikipedia

generates this output:

oooooo oooooo oooo o8o oooo o8o .o8 o8o `888. `888. .8' `"' `888 `"' "888 `"' `888. .8888. .8' oooo 888 oooo oooo oo.ooooo. .ooooo. .oooo888 oooo .oooo. `888 .8'`888. .8' `888 888 .8P' `888 888' `88b d88' `88b d88' `888 `888 `P )88b `888.8' `888.8' 888 888888. 888 888 888 888ooo888 888 888 888 .oP"888 `888' `888' 888 888 `88b. 888 888 888 888 .o 888 888 888 d8( 888 `8' `8' o888o o888o o888o o888o 888bod8P' `Y8bod8P' `Y8bod88P" o888o `Y888""8o 888 o888o

The -ct options centers the text and makes it take up the full width of the terminal. The -f roman option specifies the 'roman' font file.

Font examples

Invita

__ __) (, ) | / , /) , /) , | /| / (/_ __ _ _(/ _ |/ |/ _(_/(___(_/_)__(/_(_(__(_(_(_ / | .-/ (_/

Banner (same as banner utility)

# # # # # # # # # ##### ###### ##### # ## # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #### # # # ##### # # # # # # # # # # # # ##### # # # # ###### # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ## ## # # # # # ###### ##### # # #

Larry3d

__ __ __ __ /\ \ __/\ \ __/\ \ __ /\ \ __ \ \ \/\ \ \ \/\_\ \ \/'\ /\_\ _____ __ \_\ \/\_\ __ \ \ \ \ \ \ \/\ \ \ , < \/\ \/\ '__`\ /'__`\ /'_` \/\ \ /'__`\ \ \ \_/ \_\ \ \ \ \ \\`\\ \ \ \ \L\ \/\ __//\ \L\ \ \ \/\ \L\.\_ \ `\___x___/\ \_\ \_\ \_\ \_\ \ ,__/\ \____\ \___,_\ \_\ \__/.\_\ '\/__//__/ \/_/\/_/\/_/\/_/\ \ \/ \/____/\/__,_ /\/_/\/__/\/_/ \ \_\ \/_/

FIGlet-based ASCII typefaces

Eric Olson's 2002 FIG typeface family is a series of OpenType fonts similar to the output of FIGlet.

TOIlet seeks to extend FIGlet to use colour text.12 FIGlet supports TOIlet fonts as of version 2.2.4.

See also

  • Free and open-source software portal

References

  1. "FIGlet FAQ". Retrieved 2013-09-19. http://www.figlet.org/faq.html ↩

  2. Stutz, Michael (2001). "Text Fonts". The Linux Cookbook. No Starch Press. ISBN 1-886411-48-4. Retrieved 2008-04-25. 1-886411-48-4 ↩

  3. Text::FIGlet https://metacpan.org/module/Text::FIGlet ↩

  4. "Official FIGlet FTP site". Retrieved 2008-04-25. http://ftp.figlet.org/pub/figlet/program/ ↩

  5. Rigaut, Benoît (1996). "Figlet Java". Archived from the original on 2008-05-09. Retrieved 2008-04-25. https://web.archive.org/web/20080509134946/http://www.rigaut.com/benoit/CERN/FigletJava/ ↩

  6. Gillespie, Pat (2006). "TAAG". Archived from the original on 2012-02-20. Retrieved 2008-05-01. https://web.archive.org/web/20120220130116/http://patorjk.com/software/taag/ ↩

  7. Baltes, Lucas. "PHP Figlet". Retrieved 2008-04-25. http://www.phpclasses.org/phpfiglet ↩

  8. "Zend Framework – Zend_Text_Figlet Component". Archived from the original on 2012-08-22. Retrieved 2013-10-29. https://web.archive.org/web/20120822005633/http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.text.html#zend.text.figlet ↩

  9. Jones, Christopher (2007). "pyfiglet". Retrieved 2014-11-27. https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyfiglet/ ↩

  10. Sampson, Luke (13 December 2018). "GitHub - lukesampson/figlet: Figlet in Go". Github. Retrieved 13 December 2018. https://github.com/lukesampson/figlet ↩

  11. frostedKIVI (2020-03-23). "Duckduckgo has a built in FIGlet, how amazing is that? Possibly my favorite easter egg especially since i found it all by myself randomly". r/duckduckgo. Retrieved 2025-03-15. https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/fnpq82/duckduckgo_has_a_built_in_figlet_how_amazing_is/?rdt=39682 ↩

  12. "TOIlet". Retrieved 2010-01-29. http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/toilet ↩