bash file to generate a fortune from a random cowsay character

generate-cowsay

#!/bin/bash

cows[1]=beavis.zen
cows[2]=bong
cows[3]=bud-frogs
cows[4]=bunny
cows[5]=cheese
cows[6]=cower
cows[7]=daemon
cows[8]=default
cows[9]=dragon
cows[10]=dragon-and-cow
cows[11]=elephant
cows[12]=elephant-in-snake
cows[13]=eyes
cows[14]=flaming-sheep
cows[15]=ghostbusters
cows[16]=head-in
cows[17]=hellokitty
cows[18]=kiss
cows[19]=kitty
cows[20]=koala
cows[21]=kosh

cows[22]=luke-koala
cows[23]=meow
cows[24]=milk
cows[25]=moofasa
cows[26]=moose
cows[27]=mutilated
cows[28]=ren
cows[29]=satanic
cows[30]=sheep
cows[31]=skeleton
cows[32]=small
cows[33]=sodomized
cows[34]=stegosaurus
cows[35]=stimpy
cows[36]=supermilker
cows[37]=surgery
cows[38]=telebears
cows[39]=three-eyes
cows[40]=turkey
cows[41]=turtle
cows[42]=tux
cows[43]=udder
cows[44]=vader
cows[45]=vader-koala
cows[46]=www

declare -i MAX=${#cows[@]}
if [ ! $MAX -gt 0 ]; then
  MAX=6
fi



cowsay -f ${cows[$[ ( $RANDOM % $MAX )  + 1 ]]} `fortune`

Suggestions welcome

fortune | cowsay -f ls /usr/share/cowsay/cows/ | shuf -n 1

fortune | cowsay -f $(ls /usr/share/cowsay/cows/ | shuf -n 1)

i do this in my .zlogin

function randomsay() {
    cows=(`cowsay -l | grep -v '/'`)
    cow=${cows[$RANDOM % ${#cows[@]} ]}
    cowsay -f $cow "$@"
}

On Mac (cowsay -l returns a very inconvenient format):

function randomsay() {
  cow=(`cowsay -l | tail -n +2 | tr  " "  "\n" | sort -R | head -n 1`)
  cowsay -f $cow "$@"
}

My dotfile entry

Hey guys, how are you?

I just found this command:
fortune -a | cow$(shuf -n1 -e say think) -f $(ls /usr/share/cowsay/cows/ | shuf -n1)

It works like a charm!
source: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1661545

Yes ls thing works and looks cleaner, it'll make another IO operation too.
You can filter out some of dirty cows using this gist xD

cowsay -f "$(cowsay -l | sed '1d' | tr ' ' '\n' | sort -R | head -1)"

This avoids the need to ls the directory directly, just in case the path ever changes.