sl

What it does

sl displays a moving ASCII steam locomotive across your terminal screen. It was created as a humorous response to mistyping ls.

How it works (mechanical)

• Prints animated ASCII frames to stdout.
• Uses terminal control sequences for movement.
• No filesystem interaction.
• Terminates after animation completes.

Quick Start

sl

10 Practical Examples

# 1) Default locomotive
sl

# 2) Smaller version
sl -l

# 3) Accident mode
sl -a

# 4) Flying steam
sl -F

# 5) Combine options
sl -laF

# 6) Install (Debian/Ubuntu)
sudo apt install sl

# 7) Install (RHEL/Fedora)
sudo dnf install sl

# 8) Install (Arch)
sudo pacman -S sl

# 9) Alias for fun
alias ls='sl'

# 10) Restore sanity
unalias ls

Notes & Gotchas

• Purely decorative.
• Interrupt with Ctrl+C.
• Best viewed in full-width terminal.

Historical Context

Created in the 1990s as a playful reminder to type commands carefully. A long-standing Unix classic.

Related Commands

• ls
• cowsay
• fortune
• cmatrix