This program is part of Netpbm.
pbmlife reads a PBM image as input, applies the rules of Life to it for one generation, and produces a PBM image as output.
A white pixel in the image is interpreted as a live beastie, and a black pixel as an empty space.
There are no command line options defined specifically for pbmlife, but it recognizes the options common to all programs based on libnetpbm (See Common Options.)