A cat(1) clone with syntax highlighting and Git integration.

bat supports syntax highlighting for a large number of programming and markup languages:

bat communicates with git to show modifications with respect to the index (see left side bar):

Check out the Release page for binary builds and Debian packages.

On Arch Linux, you can install the AUR package via yaourt, or manually:

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/bat.git
cd bat
makepkg -si

If you want to build to compile bat from source, you need Rust 1.24 or higher. You can then use cargo to build everything:

cargo install bat

bat uses the excellent syntect library for syntax highlighting. syntect can read any Sublime Text .sublime-syntax file and theme.

To build your own language-set and theme, follow these steps:

Create a folder with a syntax highlighting theme:

mkdir -p ~/.config/bat/themes
cd ~/.config/bat/themes

# Download a theme, for example:
git clone https://github.com/jonschlinkert/sublime-monokai-extended

# Create a 'Default.tmTheme' link
ln -s "sublime-monokai-extended/Monokai Extended.tmTheme" Default.tmTheme

Create a folder with language definition files:

mkdir -p ~/.config/bat/syntax
cd ~/.config/bat/syntax

# Download some language definition files, for example:
git clone https://github.com/sublimehq/Packages/
rm -rf Packages/Markdown
git clone https://github.com/jonschlinkert/sublime-markdown-extended

Finally, use the following command to parse all these files into a binary cache:

bat init-cache