A cat(1) clone with syntax highlighting and Git integration.
Key Features •
How To Use •
Installation •
Customization •
Project goals, alternatives
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Syntax highlighting
bat
supports syntax highlighting for a large number of programming and markup
languages:
Git integration
bat
communicates with git
to show modifications with respect to the index
(see left side bar):
Show non-printable characters
You can use the -A
/--show-all
option to show and highlight non-printable
characters:
Automatic paging
By default, bat
pipes its own output to a pager (e.g. less
) if the output is too large for one screen.
If you would rather bat
work like cat
all the time (never page output), you can set --paging=never
as an option, either on the command line or in your configuration file.
If you intend to alias cat
to bat
in your shell configuration, you can use alias cat='bat --paging=never'
to preserve the default behavior.
File concatenation
Even with a pager set, you can still use bat
to concatenate files bat
detects a non-interactive terminal (i.e. when you pipe into another process or into a file), bat
will act as a drop-in replacement for cat
and fall back to printing the plain file contents, regardless of the --pager
option's value.
How to use
Display a single file on the terminal
> bat README.md
Display multiple files at once
> bat src/*.rs
Read from stdin, determine the syntax automatically (note, highlighting will
only work if the syntax can be determined from the first line of the file,
usually through a shebang such as #!/bin/sh
)
> curl -s https://sh.rustup.rs | bat
Read from stdin, specify the language explicitly
> yaml2json .travis.yml | json_pp | bat -l json
Show and highlight non-printable characters:
> bat -A /etc/hosts
Use it as a cat
replacement:
bat > note.md # quickly create a new file
bat header.md content.md footer.md > document.md
bat -n main.rs # show line numbers (only)
bat f - g # output 'f', then stdin, then 'g'.
Integration with other tools
fzf
You can use bat
as a previewer for fzf
. To do this,
use bat
s --color=always
option to force colorized output. You can also use --line-range
option to restrict the load times for long files:
fzf --preview 'bat --color=always --style=numbers --line-range=:500 {}'
For more information, see fzf
's README
.
find
or fd
You can use the -exec
option of find
to preview all search results with bat
:
find … -exec bat {} +
If you happen to use fd
, you can use the -X
/--exec-batch
option to do the same:
fd … -X bat
ripgrep
With batgrep
, bat
can be used as the printer for ripgrep
search results.
batgrep needle src/
tail -f
bat
can be combined with tail -f
to continuously monitor a given file with syntax highlighting.
tail -f /var/log/pacman.log | bat --paging=never -l log
Note that we have to switch off paging in order for this to work. We have also specified the syntax
explicitly (-l log
), as it can not be auto-detected in this case.
git
You can combine bat
with git show
to view an older version of a given file with proper syntax
highlighting:
git show v0.6.0:src/main.rs | bat -l rs
git diff
You can combine bat
with git diff
to view lines around code changes with proper syntax
highlighting:
batdiff() {
git diff --name-only --diff-filter=d | xargs bat --diff
}
If you prefer to use this as a separate tool, check out batdiff
in bat-extras
.
If you are looking for more support for git and diff operations, check out delta
.
xclip
The line numbers and Git modification markers in the output of bat
can make it hard to copy
the contents of a file. To prevent this, you can call bat
with the -p
/--plain
option or
simply pipe the output into xclip
:
bat main.cpp | xclip
bat
will detect that the output is being redirected and print the plain file contents.
man
bat
can be used as a colorizing pager for man
, by setting the
MANPAGER
environment variable:
export MANPAGER="sh -c 'col -bx | bat -l man -p'"
man 2 select
(replace bat
with batcat
if you are on Debian or Ubuntu)
It might also be necessary to set MANROFFOPT="-c"
if you experience
formatting problems.
If you prefer to have this bundled in a new command, you can also use batman
.
Note that the Manpage syntax is developed in this repository and still needs some work.
Also, note that this will not work with Mandocs man
implementation.
prettier
/ shfmt
/ rustfmt
The prettybat
script is a wrapper that will format code and print it with bat
.
Installation
apt
)
On Ubuntu (using ... and other Debian-based Linux distributions.
bat
is available on Ubuntu since 20.04 ("Focal") and Debian since August 2021 (Debian 11 - "Bullseye").
If your Ubuntu/Debian installation is new enough you can simply run:
sudo apt install bat
Important: If you install bat
this way, please note that the executable may be installed as batcat
instead of bat
(due to a name
clash with another package). You can set up a bat -> batcat
symlink or alias to prevent any issues that may come up because of this and to be consistent with other distributions:
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
ln -s /usr/bin/batcat ~/.local/bin/bat
.deb
packages)
On Ubuntu (using most recent ... and other Debian-based Linux distributions.
If the package has not yet been promoted to your Ubuntu/Debian installation, or you want
the most recent release of bat
, download the latest .deb
package from the
release page and install it via:
sudo dpkg -i bat_0.18.3_amd64.deb # adapt version number and architecture
On Alpine Linux
You can install the bat
package
from the official sources, provided you have the appropriate repository enabled:
apk add bat
On Arch Linux
You can install the bat
package
from the official sources:
pacman -S bat
On Fedora
You can install the bat
package from the official Fedora Modular repository.
dnf install bat
On Funtoo Linux
You can install the bat
package from dev-kit.
emerge sys-apps/bat
On Gentoo Linux
You can install the bat
package
from the official sources:
emerge sys-apps/bat
On Void Linux
You can install bat
via xbps-install:
xbps-install -S bat
On Termux
You can install bat
via pkg:
pkg install bat
On FreeBSD
You can install a precompiled bat
package with pkg:
pkg install bat
or build it on your own from the FreeBSD ports:
cd /usr/ports/textproc/bat
make install
On OpenBSD
You can install bat
package using pkg_add(1)
:
pkg_add bat
Via nix
You can install bat
using the nix package manager:
nix-env -i bat
On openSUSE
You can install bat
with zypper:
zypper install bat
Via snap package
There is currently no recommended snap package available. Existing packages may be available, but are not officially supported and may contain issues.
On macOS (or Linux) via Homebrew
You can install bat
with Homebrew on MacOS or Homebrew on Linux:
brew install bat
On macOS via MacPorts
Or install bat
with MacPorts:
port install bat
On Windows
There are a few options to install bat
on Windows. Once you have installed bat
,
take a look at the "Using bat
on Windows" section.
Prerequisites
You will need to install the Visual C++ Redistributable package.
With Chocolatey
You can install bat
via Chocolatey:
choco install bat
With Scoop
You can install bat
via scoop:
scoop install bat
From prebuilt binaries:
You can download prebuilt binaries from the Release page,
You will need to install the Visual C++ Redistributable package.
From binaries
Check out the Release page for
prebuilt versions of bat
for many different architectures. Statically-linked
binaries are also available: look for archives with musl
in the file name.
From source
If you want to build bat
from source, you need Rust 1.51 or
higher. You can then use cargo
to build everything:
cargo install --locked bat
Note that additional files like the man page or shell completion
files can not be installed in this way. They will be generated by cargo
and should be available in the cargo target folder (under build
).
Customization
Highlighting theme
Use bat --list-themes
to get a list of all available themes for syntax
highlighting. To select the TwoDark
theme, call bat
with the
--theme=TwoDark
option or set the BAT_THEME
environment variable to
TwoDark
. Use export BAT_THEME="TwoDark"
in your shell's startup file to
make the change permanent. Alternatively, use bat
s
configuration file.
If you want to preview the different themes on a custom file, you can use
the following command (you need fzf
for this):
bat --list-themes | fzf --preview="bat --theme={} --color=always /path/to/file"
bat
looks good on a dark background by default. However, if your terminal uses a
light background, some themes like GitHub
or OneHalfLight
will work better for you.
You can also use a custom theme by following the
'Adding new themes' section below.
8-bit themes
bat
has three themes that always use 8-bit colors,
even when truecolor support is available:
ansi
looks decent on any terminal. It uses 3-bit colors: black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, and white.base16
is designed for base16 terminal themes. It uses 4-bit colors (3-bit colors plus bright variants) in accordance with the base16 styling guidelines.base16-256
is designed for base16-shell. It replaces certain bright colors with 8-bit colors from 16 to 21. Do not use this simply because you have a 256-color terminal but are not using base16-shell.
Although these themes are more restricted, they have three advantages over truecolor themes. They:
- Enjoy maximum compatibility. Some terminal utilities do not support more than 3-bit colors.
- Adapt to terminal theme changes. Even for already printed output.
- Visually harmonize better with other terminal software.
Output style
You can use the --style
option to control the appearance of bat
s output.
You can use --style=numbers,changes
, for example, to show only Git changes
and line numbers but no grid and no file header. Set the BAT_STYLE
environment
variable to make these changes permanent or use bat
s
configuration file.
Adding new syntaxes / language definitions
Should you find that a particular syntax is not available within bat
, you can follow these
instructions to easily add new syntaxes to your current bat
installation.
bat
uses the excellent syntect
library for syntax highlighting. syntect
can read any
Sublime Text .sublime-syntax
file
and theme.
A good resource for finding Sublime Syntax packages is Package Control. Once you found a syntax:
-
Create a folder with syntax definition files:
mkdir -p "$(bat --config-dir)/syntaxes" cd "$(bat --config-dir)/syntaxes" # Put new '.sublime-syntax' language definition files # in this folder (or its subdirectories), for example: git clone https://github.com/tellnobody1/sublime-purescript-syntax
-
Now use the following command to parse these files into a binary cache:
bat cache --build
-
Finally, use
bat --list-languages
to check if the new languages are available.If you ever want to go back to the default settings, call:
bat cache --clear
-
If you think that a specific syntax should be included in
bat
by default, please consider opening a "syntax request" ticket after reading the policies and instructions here: Open Syntax Request.
Adding new themes
This works very similar to how we add new syntax definitions.
First, create a folder with the new syntax highlighting themes:
mkdir -p "$(bat --config-dir)/themes"
cd "$(bat --config-dir)/themes"
# Download a theme in '.tmTheme' format, for example:
git clone https://github.com/greggb/sublime-snazzy
# Update the binary cache
bat cache --build
Finally, use bat --list-themes
to check if the new themes are available.
Adding or changing file type associations
You can add new (or change existing) file name patterns using the --map-syntax
command line option. The option takes an argument of the form pattern:syntax
where
pattern
is a glob pattern that is matched against the file name and
the absolute file path. The syntax
part is the full name of a supported language
(use bat --list-languages
for an overview).
Note: You probably want to use this option as an entry in bat
's configuration file
for persistence instead of passing it on the command line as a one-off. Generally
you'd just use -l
if you want to manually specify a language for a file.
Example: To use "INI" syntax highlighting for all files with a .conf
file extension, use
--map-syntax='*.conf:INI'
Example: To open all files called .ignore
(exact match) with the "Git Ignore" syntax, use:
--map-syntax='.ignore:Git Ignore'
Example: To open all .conf
files in subfolders of /etc/apache2
with the "Apache Conf"
syntax, use (this mapping is already built in):
--map-syntax='/etc/apache2/**/*.conf:Apache Conf'
Using a different pager
bat
uses the pager that is specified in the PAGER
environment variable. If this variable is not
set, less
is used by default. If you want to use a different pager, you can either modify the
PAGER
variable or set the BAT_PAGER
environment variable to override what is specified in
PAGER
.
Note: If PAGER
is more
or most
, bat
will silently use less
instead to ensure support for colors.
If you want to pass command-line arguments to the pager, you can also set them via the
PAGER
/BAT_PAGER
variables:
export BAT_PAGER="less -RF"
Instead of using environment variables, you can also use bat
s configuration file to configure the pager (--pager
option).
Note: By default, if the pager is set to less
(and no command-line options are specified),
bat
will pass the following command line options to the pager: -R
/--RAW-CONTROL-CHARS
,
-F
/--quit-if-one-screen
and -X
/--no-init
. The last option (-X
) is only used for less
versions older than 530.
The -R
option is needed to interpret ANSI colors correctly. The second option (-F
) instructs
less to exit immediately if the output size is smaller than the vertical size of the terminal.
This is convenient for small files because you do not have to press q
to quit the pager. The
third option (-X
) is needed to fix a bug with the --quit-if-one-screen
feature in old versions
of less
. Unfortunately, it also breaks mouse-wheel support in less
.
If you want to enable mouse-wheel scrolling on older versions of less
, you can pass just -R
(as
in the example above, this will disable the quit-if-one-screen feature). For less 530 or newer,
it should work out of the box.
Indentation
bat
expands tabs to 4 spaces by itself, not relying on the pager. To change this, simply add the
--tabs
argument with the number of spaces you want to be displayed.
Note: Defining tab stops for the pager (via the --pager
argument by bat
, or via the LESS
environment variable for less
) won't be taken into account because the pager will already get
expanded spaces instead of tabs. This behaviour is added to avoid indentation issues caused by the
sidebar. Calling bat
with --tabs=0
will override it and let tabs be consumed by the pager.
Dark mode
If you make use of the dark mode feature in macOS, you might want to configure bat
to use a different
theme based on the OS theme. The following snippet uses the default
theme when in the dark mode
and the GitHub
theme when in the light mode.
alias cat="bat --theme=\$(defaults read -globalDomain AppleInterfaceStyle &> /dev/null && echo default || echo GitHub)"
Configuration file
bat
can also be customized with a configuration file. The location of the file is dependent
on your operating system. To get the default path for your system, call
bat --config-file
Alternatively, you can use the BAT_CONFIG_PATH
environment variable to point bat
to a
non-default location of the configuration file:
export BAT_CONFIG_PATH="/path/to/bat.conf"
A default configuration file can be created with the --generate-config-file
option.
bat --generate-config-file
Format
The configuration file is a simple list of command line arguments. Use bat --help
to see a full list of possible options and values. In addition, you can add comments by prepending a line with the #
character.
Example configuration file:
# Set the theme to "TwoDark"
--theme="TwoDark"
# Show line numbers, Git modifications and file header (but no grid)
--style="numbers,changes,header"
# Use italic text on the terminal (not supported on all terminals)
--italic-text=always
# Use C++ syntax for Arduino .ino files
--map-syntax "*.ino:C++"
bat
on Windows
Using bat
mostly works out-of-the-box on Windows, but a few features may need extra configuration.
Prerequisites
You will need to install the Visual C++ Redistributable package.
Paging
Windows only includes a very limited pager in the form of more
. You can download a Windows binary
for less
from its homepage or through
Chocolatey. To use it, place the binary in a directory in
your PATH
or define an environment variable. The Chocolatey package installs less
automatically.
Colors
Windows 10 natively supports colors in both conhost.exe
(Command Prompt) and PowerShell since
v1511, as
well as in newer versions of bash. On earlier versions of Windows, you can use
Cmder, which includes ConEmu.
Note: The Git and MSYS versions of less
do not correctly interpret colors on Windows. If you
don’t have any other pagers installed, you can disable paging entirely by passing --paging=never
or by setting BAT_PAGER
to an empty string.
Cygwin
bat
on Windows does not natively support Cygwin's unix-style paths (/cygdrive/*
). When passed an absolute cygwin path as an argument, bat
will encounter the following error: The system cannot find the path specified. (os error 3)
This can be solved by creating a wrapper or adding the following function to your .bash_profile
file:
bat() {
local index
local args=("$@")
for index in $(seq 0 ${#args[@]}) ; do
case "${args[index]}" in
-*) continue;;
*) [ -e "${args[index]}" ] && args[index]="$(cygpath --windows "${args[index]}")";;
esac
done
command bat "${args[@]}"
}
Troubleshooting
Garbled output
If an input file contains color codes or other ANSI escape sequences or control characters, bat
will have problems
performing syntax highlighting and text wrapping, and thus the output can become garbled.
When displaying such files it is recommended to disable both syntax highlighting and wrapping by
passing the --color=never --wrap=never
options to bat
.
Terminals & colors
bat
handles terminals with and without truecolor support. However, the colors in most syntax
highlighting themes are not optimized for 8-bit colors. It is therefore strongly recommended
that you use a terminal with 24-bit truecolor support (terminator
, konsole
, iTerm2
, ...),
or use one of the basic 8-bit themes designed for a restricted set of colors.
See this article for more details and a full list of
terminals with truecolor support.
Make sure that your truecolor terminal sets the COLORTERM
variable to either truecolor
or
24bit
. Otherwise, bat
will not be able to determine whether or not 24-bit escape sequences
are supported (and fall back to 8-bit colors).
Line numbers and grid are hardly visible
Please try a different theme (see bat --list-themes
for a list). The OneHalfDark
and
OneHalfLight
themes provide grid and line colors that are brighter.
File encodings
bat
natively supports UTF-8 as well as UTF-16. For every other file encoding, you may need to
convert to UTF-8 first because the encodings can typically not be auto-detected. You can iconv
to do so.
Example: if you have a PHP file in Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) encoding, you can call:
iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 my-file.php | bat
Note: you might have to use the -l
/--language
option if the syntax can not be auto-detected
by bat
.
Development
# Recursive clone to retrieve all submodules
git clone --recursive https://github.com/sharkdp/bat
# Build (debug version)
cd bat
cargo build --bins
# Run unit tests and integration tests
cargo test
# Install (release version)
cargo install --path . --locked
# Build a bat binary with modified syntaxes and themes
bash assets/create.sh
cargo install --path . --locked --force
If you want to build an application that uses bat
s pretty-printing
features as a library, check out the the API documentation.
Note that you have to use either regex-onig
or regex-fancy
as a feature
when you depend on bat
as a library.
Contributing
Take a look at the CONTRIBUTING.md
guide.
Maintainers
Security vulnerabilities
Please contact David Peter via email if you want to report a vulnerability in bat
.
Project goals and alternatives
bat
tries to achieve the following goals:
- Provide beautiful, advanced syntax highlighting
- Integrate with Git to show file modifications
- Be a drop-in replacement for (POSIX)
cat
- Offer a user-friendly command-line interface
There are a lot of alternatives, if you are looking for similar programs. See this document for a comparison.
License
Copyright (c) 2018-2021 bat-developers.
bat
is made available under the terms of either the MIT License or the Apache License 2.0, at your option.
See the LICENSE-APACHE and LICENSE-MIT files for license details.