Text Mode ASCII-art Box and Comment Drawing in Linux

Boxes command is a text filter and a little known tool that can draw any kind of ASCII art box around its input text or code for fun and profit. You can quickly create email signatures, or create regional comments in any programming language. This command was intended to be used with the vim text editor, but can be used with any text editor which supports filters, as well as from the command line as a standalone tool.

Install boxes for text mode ASCII-art box and comment drawing

Use the apt-get command or apt command to install boxes under a Debian / Ubuntu Linux:

$ sudo apt-get install boxes

Sample outputs:

[sudo] password for vivek: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  boxes
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 60.4 kB of archives.
After this operation, 259 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan/universe amd64 boxes amd64 1.3-1 [60.4 kB]
Fetched 60.4 kB in 1s (43.1 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package boxes.
(Reading database ... 239154 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../archives/boxes_1.3-1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking boxes (1.3-1) ...
Setting up boxes (1.3-1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.7-3) ...

A note about CentOS/RHEL/Fedora users

RHEL or CentOS Linux users, use the yum command to install boxes (first enable EPEL repo as described here on a CentOS/RHEL 6.x, if you are using a CentOS/RHEL 7.x see this page to enable EPEL repo and if you are using a CentOS/RHEL 8 see this page to enable epel repo):

## yum install boxes

Sample outputs:

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * base: ftp.iitm.ac.in
 * epel: repo.ugm.ac.id
 * extras: ftp.iitm.ac.in
 * updates: ftp.iitm.ac.in
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package boxes.x86_64 0:1.1.1-4.el7 will be installed
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

===============================================================================
 Package         Arch             Version                 Repository      Size
===============================================================================
Installing:
 boxes           x86_64           1.1.1-4.el7             epel            66 k

Transaction Summary
===============================================================================
Install  1 Package

Total download size: 66 k
Installed size: 157 k
Is this ok [y/d/N]: y
Downloading packages:
boxes-1.1.1-4.el7.x86_64.rpm                              |  66 kB   00:02     
Running transaction check
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded
Running transaction
  Installing : boxes-1.1.1-4.el7.x86_64                                    1/1 
  Verifying  : boxes-1.1.1-4.el7.x86_64                                    1/1 

Installed:
  boxes.x86_64 0:1.1.1-4.el7                                                   

Complete!

Fedora Linux user try dnf command:

$ sudo dnf install boxes

FreeBSD install boxes

FreeBSD user can use the port as follows:

## cd /usr/ports/misc/boxes/ && make install clean

Or, add the binary package using the pkg_add command:

## pkg install boxes

Install boxes on Mac OSX

Use the brew command:

brew install boxes

Windows installation

If you have choco (chocolatey package), you can now simply run the following command on Windows operating system:

choco install boxes.portable

Draw any kind of box around some given text

Type the following command:

echo "This is a test" | boxes

Of course we can specify the name of the design to use:

echo -e "\n\tVivek Gite\n\tvivek@nixcraft.com\n\twww.cyberciti.biz" | boxes -d dog

Fig.01: Unix / Linux: Boxes Command To Draw Various Designs

#linux