%

BAT: a 'cat killer'… with wings, for color and syntax highligthing!

Article published the ; modified the
2 minutes to read

This article has 336 words.
RAW source of the article:
Commit version: dbfc152

Description

Introducing to bat tool, an “enhanced” clone of cat, which offers syntax highlighting and colouring, supports multiple languages and integrates with Git!

It’s a tool available under an open-source licence, either MIT or Apache 2.0 licence, wrote since several years (4y, at the time of writing this article).

Note: Prefers to use a terminal capable of handling a 24-bit colour palette properly.

Installation

Regardless you’re using either Linux or *BSD, the package to be installed is bat.

  • on Debian: the binary is batcat
  • on OpenBSD : bat!

Configuration

You can generate a file config, as instance:

:$ bat --generate-config-file

To use truecolor or 24bit on the terminal, add the environment variable: COLORTERM :

if [ -x $(command -v bat) ]; then
    export COLORTERM="truecolor" # or "24bit"
fi

(For Debian/*Buntu, change the binary name!)

Utilisation

One using case is to combine with others tools, like git, find, man, etc.

find

To use bat with find:

find … -exec bat {} +

where ‘…’ represents the search term.

git

bat can show you the git diff, by highlighting term, whilst maintaining the indentation.

Make a batdiff function:

batdiff() {
    git diff --name-only --relative --diff-filter=d -z | xargs -0 bat --diff
}

man

Add the MANPAGER environment variable:

export MANPAGER="bat -pl man"

Of course, it’s possible to implement any feature supported by bat tool.

And finally, call simply (the best) man:

  • Debian : man batcat

Debian : man batcat
Debian : man batcat

  • OpenBSD : man pf.conf

OpenBSD : man pf.conf
OpenBSD : man pf.conf

Tip

You will notice that the output also contains ANSI escape characters or symbols, which are incomprehensible to us, humans.

Pipe col to bat:

man() {
    sh -c "man '$@' | col -bx | bat -l man"
}

And use simply man. (always the best).

Documentation

Acknowledgements