Make your terminal snow

snowjob.sh

#!/bin/bash

LINES=$(tput lines)
COLUMNS=$(tput cols)

declare -A snowflakes
declare -A lastflakes

clear

function move_flake() {
    i="$1"

    if [ "${snowflakes[$i]}" = "" ] || [ "${snowflakes[$i]}" = "$LINES" ]; then
        snowflakes[$i]=0
    else
        if [ "${lastflakes[$i]}" != "" ]; then
            printf "\033[%s;%sH \033[1;1H " ${lastflakes[$i]} $i
        fi
    fi

    printf "\033[%s;%sH\u274$[($RANDOM%6)+3]\033[1;1H" ${snowflakes[$i]} $i

    lastflakes[$i]=${snowflakes[$i]}
    snowflakes[$i]=$((${snowflakes[$i]}+1))
}

while :
do
    i=$(($RANDOM % $COLUMNS))

    move_flake $i

    for x in "${!lastflakes[@]}"
    do
        move_flake "$x"
    done

    sleep 0.1
done

Wow, interesting that others are finding this today. I've done a lot of work on this over the years and its currently packaged over here:

https://github.com/sontek/snowmachine

I think people are finding it through a python implementation that got to hackernews front page https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38652339

Oh thats also yours hahaha @sontek

For people on MacOS that the new version isn't working on, it's due to the bash version shipping with macOS being too old to support unicode escape.

If you have a newer version of bash installed in homebrew you can change the bang at the top e.g. #!/opt/homebrew/bin/bash (or use the author's python version)

snowflakes are not coming for me

You cut too much in your snowflake paste. Change line 22 to printf "\033[%s;%sH❄\033[1;1H" ${snowflakes[$i]} $i

This is what I get on MacOS iTerm2. Is this supposed to be it! I was expecting SNOW flakes xD.

With ❄

Thanks the updates everyone, snow has been fixed!