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README.md
A cat(1) clone with syntax highlighting and Git integration.
Key Features • How To Use • Installation • Customization • Project goals, alternatives • Translation [中文][日本文]
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
bat
can pipe its own output to less
if the output is too large for one screen.
File concatenation
Oh.. you can also use it to concatenate files 😉. Whenever
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.
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
> 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
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 show
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
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
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.
prettier
/ shfmt
/ rustfmt
The prettybat
script is a wrapper that will format code and print it with bat
.
Installation
On Ubuntu
... and other Debian-based Linux distributions.
You can install the Ubuntu bat
package or the Debian bat
package since Ubuntu Eoan 19.10 or Debian unstable sid.
apt install bat
If you want to run the latest release of bat or if you are on older versions of Ubuntu/Debian, download the latest .deb
package from the release page
and install it via:
sudo dpkg -i bat_0.12.1_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 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 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
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
On macOS
You can install bat
with Homebrew:
brew install bat
Or install bat
with MacPorts:
port install bat
On Windows
You can download prebuilt binaries from the Release page, or install it with scoop or Chocolatey:
scoop install bat
choco install bat
See below for notes.
Via Docker
There is a Docker image that you can use to run bat
in a container:
docker pull danlynn/bat
alias bat='docker run -it --rm -e BAT_THEME -e BAT_STYLE -e BAT_TABS -v "$(pwd):/myapp" danlynn/bat'
Via Ansible
You can install bat
with Ansible:
# Install role on local machine
ansible-galaxy install aeimer.install_bat
---
# Playbook to install bat
- host: all
roles:
- aeimer.install_bat
This should work with the following distributions:
- Debian/Ubuntu
- ARM (eg. Raspberry PI)
- Arch Linux
- Void Linux
- FreeBSD
- MacOS
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 1.35 or
higher. You can then use cargo
to build everything:
cargo install bat
On some platforms, you might need to install llvm
and/or libclang-dev
.
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.
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
bat
uses the excellent syntect
library for syntax highlighting. syntect
can read any
Sublime Text .sublime-syntax
file
and theme. To add new syntax definitions, do the following.
Create a folder with syntax definition files:
mkdir -p "$(bat --config-dir)/syntaxes"
cd "$(bat --config-dir)/syntaxes"
# Put new '.sublime-syntax' language definition files
# in this folder (or its subdirectories), for example:
git clone https://github.com/tellnobody1/sublime-purescript-syntax
Now use the following command to parse these files into a binary cache:
bat cache --build
Finally, use bat --list-languages
to check if the new languages are available.
If you ever want to go back to the default settings, call:
bat cache --clear
Adding new themes
This works very similar to how we add new syntax definitions.
First, create a folder with the new syntax highlighting themes:
mkdir -p "$(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.
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
.
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 first (-R
) 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, you can either pass just -R
(as in the example above, this will disable
the quit-if-one-screen feature), or you can use a recent version of less
and pass -RF
which
will hopefully enable both quit-if-one-screen and mouse-wheel scrolling.
If scrolling still doesn't work for you, you can try to pass the -S
option in addition.
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 light mode
and the GitHub
theme when in the dark 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"
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
# Add mouse scrolling support in less (does not work with older
# versions of "less")
--pager="less -FR"
# Use C++ syntax (instead of C) for .h header files
--map-syntax h:cpp
# Use "gitignore" highlighting for ".ignore" files
--map-syntax .ignore:.gitignore
Using bat
on Windows
bat
mostly works out-of-the-box on Windows, but a few features may need extra configuration.
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
Terminals & colors
bat
handles terminals with and without truecolor support. However, the colors in the syntax
highlighting themes are not optimized for 8-bit colors and it is therefore strongly recommended
that you use a terminal with 24-bit truecolor support (terminator
, konsole
, iTerm2
, ...).
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
# Build a bat binary with modified syntaxes and themes
bash assets/create.sh
cargo install -f
Maintainers
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.