---
name: "snake4"
section: "6"
platform: "linux"
package: "snake4"
version: "1.0.14-1.3"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/snake4"
---

# snake4(6)

Game starring a fruit-eating snake.

## NAME

snake4, snake4scores - Game starring a fruit-eating snake.

## SYNOPSIS

**snake4** \[-hHV\] \[-M file\] \[--help\] \[--highscores\] \[--version\] \[--merge-highscores=file\]

**snake4scores**

## DESCRIPTION

The **snake4** program is my fourth implementation of the snake game, written for Unix and X11. Previous versions were written for MS-DOS.

Move the snake around the screen and eat food. The snake grows in length as you eat. Avoid hitting the fence, eating lethal mushrooms and rotten food, and biting your own tail.

Now and then a slim-pill will bounce around. If you eat this, you will get shorter, and you will gain bonus points for every length you loose. The bonus is also given when a round is over.

When food starts blinking, it's about to rot. Rotten food is poisonous, and thus uneatable. As long as it blinks, it can still be eaten.

Oh, yes - I almost forgot: You may be visited by the evil headbanger. Take my advice and run away from him before he hits you in the head! He won't stay long.

The keys used to control the game are given at startup.

**snake4** features a site-wide highscore file. The file contains the top 200 users. Each user may appear once only in the highscore table.

For technical reasons, **snake4** connects to the X11 server before parsing options. This makes it impossible to eg. browse the highscore table using -H if no server is available. To be able to see the scores in such a case, **snake4scores** produces the same output as **snake4** with option -H, but does no attempt on connecting to the X11 server.

### OPTIONS

- *-h, --help*

  Print a usage message on standard output, and exit successfully.

- *-H, --highscores*

  Dump the highscore list to standard output, and exit successfully. Starting **snake4** with the name **snake4score** does the same thing, without first connecting to the X11 server.  Note that this will possibly print more entries than the 20 or so that will fit within the game startup screen.

- *-V, --version*

  Print version information on standard output, then exit successfully.

- *-M, --merge-highscores=file*

  Merge separate highscore file *file* into the default highscore file, and exit successfully. Displays the new highscore table. This option is for the game owner or root only.

## X11 OPTIONS

In addition to the above mentioned options, **snake4** accepts the standard X11 toolkit options.

## AUTHOR

Sverre H. Huseby \<shh@thathost.com\>.