What's the deal with the banner command?

Question

In some versions of UNIX and Linux there\'s a banner command (usually /usr/bin/banner) that prints great output like this:

 #####  #######    #     #####  #          


        

Answer 1

Because there were the two divergent behaviours when POSIX was standardized, back in the late 80s, banner was omitted from the standard. It was not essential and there wasn't a prevailing standard to select as 'the standard'.

And yes, you are out of luck if you use banner in your script; the behaviour is not reliable across platforms.