ASCII Art

A Go-based ASCII Art Generator that converts input text into ASCII art using customizable font files. This project demonstrates modular programming in Go and handles edge cases like newlines, empty input, and multiple font styles.

Features

• Convert any text into ASCII art using a selected font (shadow.txt, standard.txt, thinkertoy.txt).
• Handles multi-line input using \n.
• Handles empty input and single newline inputs.
• Modular Go design:
  • main.go – orchestrates the program
  • readfont.go – reads the ASCII font file
  • parseinput.go – processes input into words/lines
  • parseascii.go – loops through words and prints ASCII
  • printword.go – prints each word character by character

File Structure

ascii-art-project/
├── main.go
├── asciiart/
│   ├── readfont.go
│   ├── parseinput.go
│   ├── parseascii.go
│   └── printword.go
├── standard.txt
├── thinkertoy.txt
├── shadow.txt
└── README.md

Usage

Run the program

By default, the program reads standard.txt:

go run . "Hello"

You can switch fonts by changing the file in ReadFont in main.go:

fileLines, err := asciiart.ReadFont("thinkertoy.txt")

or

fileLines, err := asciiart.ReadFont("shadow.txt")

Examples (Standard Font)

1. Single word:

go run . "Hello" | cat -e

Output:

 _    _          _   _          $
| |  | |        | | | |         $
| |__| |   ___  | | | |   ___   $
|  __  |  / _ \ | | | |  / _ \  $
| |  | | |  __/ | | | | | (_) | $
|_|  |_|  \___| |_| |_|  \___/  $
                                $
                                $
$

2. Multi-line input using \n:

go run . "Hello\nThere" | cat -e

Output:

 _    _          _   _          $
| |  | |        | | | |         $
| |__| |   ___  | | | |   ___   $
|  __  |  / _ \ | | | |  / _ \  $
| |  | | |  __/ | | | | | (_) | $
|_|  |_|  \___| |_| |_|  \___/  $
                                $
                                $
 _______   _                           $
|__   __| | |                          $
   | |    | |__     ___   _ __    ___  $
   | |    |  _ \   / _ \ | '__|  / _ \ $
   | |    | | | | |  __/ | |    |  __/ $
   |_|    |_| |_|  \___| |_|     \___| $
                                       $
                                       $

3. Empty input:

go run . "" | cat -e

Output:

4. Single newline input:

go run . "\n" | cat -e

Output:

$

How It Works

1. main.go reads the input from the command line.
2. readfont.go loads the selected ASCII font file and splits it into lines.
3. parseinput.go converts the input string into words/lines, handling literal \n.
4. parseascii.go loops through each word and prints its ASCII representation or a blank line if empty.
5. printword.go prints each character row by row using the font file.

ASCII Font File

• Each font file contains all printable ASCII characters.
• Each character is 8 lines tall + 1 empty line, forming a 9-line block.
• The program maps each character to the correct block using:

asciiIndex := int(char) - 32
start := asciiIndex * 9

• Changing the font file changes the style of ASCII art output.

Project Goals

• Learn modular programming in Go
• Practice file I/O and string manipulation
• Handle edge cases like empty input and newlines
• Build a reusable ASCII Art generator with multiple font styles