2 <img src="doc/logo-header.svg" alt="bat - a cat clone with wings"><br>
3 <a href="https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/actions?query=workflow%3ACICD"><img src="https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/workflows/CICD/badge.svg" alt="Build Status"></a>
4 <img src="https://img.shields.io/crates/l/bat.svg" alt="license">
5 <a href="https://crates.io/crates/bat"><img src="https://img.shields.io/crates/v/bat.svg?colorB=319e8c" alt="Version info"></a><br>
6 A <i>cat(1)</i> clone with syntax highlighting and Git integration.
10 <a href="#syntax-highlighting">Key Features</a> •
11 <a href="#how-to-use">How To Use</a> •
12 <a href="#installation">Installation</a> •
13 <a href="#customization">Customization</a> •
14 <a href="#project-goals-and-alternatives">Project goals, alternatives</a><br>
15 [<a href="https://github.com/chinanf-boy/bat-zh">中文</a>] [<a href="doc/README-ja.md">日本語</a>] [<a href="doc/README-ko.md">한국어</a>] [<a href="doc/README-ru.md">Русский</a>]
18### Syntax highlighting
20`bat` supports syntax highlighting for a large number of programming and markup
23
27`bat` communicates with `git` to show modifications with respect to the index
30
32### Show non-printable characters
34You can use the `-A`/`--show-all` option to show and highlight non-printable
37
41By default, `bat` pipes its own output to a pager (e.g `less`) if the output is too large for one screen.
42If 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.
43If you intend to alias `cat` to `bat` in your shell configuration, you can use `alias cat='bat --paging=never'` to preserve the default behavior.
45#### File concatenation
47Even with a pager set, you can still use `bat` to concatenate files :wink:.
48Whenever `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.
52Display a single file on the terminal
58Display multiple files at once
64Read from stdin, determine the syntax automatically (note, highlighting will
65only work if the syntax can be determined from the first line of the file,
66usually through a shebang such as `#!/bin/sh`)
69> curl -s https://sh.rustup.rs | bat
72Read from stdin, specify the language explicitly
75> yaml2json .travis.yml | json_pp | bat -l json
78Show and highlight non-printable characters:
83Use it as a `cat` replacement:
86bat > note.md # quickly create a new file
88bat header.md content.md footer.md > document.md
90bat -n main.rs # show line numbers (only)
92bat f - g # output 'f', then stdin, then 'g'.
95### Integration with other tools
99You can use `bat` as a previewer for [`fzf`](https://github.com/junegunn/fzf). To do this,
100use `bat`s `--color=always` option to force colorized output. You can also use `--line-range`
101option to restrict the load times for long files:
103fzf --preview 'bat --color=always --style=numbers --line-range=:500 {}'
105For more information, see [`fzf`s `README`](https://github.com/junegunn/fzf#preview-window).
109You can use the `-exec` option of `find` to preview all search results with `bat`:
114If you happen to use [`fd`](https://github.com/sharkdp/fd), you can use the `-X`/`--exec-batch` option to do the same:
121With [`batgrep`](https://github.com/eth-p/bat-extras/blob/master/doc/batgrep.md), `bat` can be used as the printer for [`ripgrep`](https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep) search results.
129`bat` can be combined with `tail -f` to continuously monitor a given file with syntax highlighting.
131tail -f /var/log/pacman.log | bat --paging=never -l log
133Note that we have to switch off paging in order for this to work. We have also specified the syntax
134explicitly (`-l log`), as it can not be auto-detected in this case.
138You can combine `bat` with `git show` to view an older version of a given file with proper syntax
141git show v0.6.0:src/main.rs | bat -l rs
146You can combine `bat` with `git diff` to view lines around code changes with proper syntax
150 git diff --name-only --diff-filter=d | xargs bat --diff
153If you prefer to use this as a separate tool, check out `batdiff` in [`bat-extras`](https://github.com/eth-p/bat-extras).
155If you are looking for more support for git and diff operations, check out [`delta`](https://github.com/dandavison/delta).
159The line numbers and Git modification markers in the output of `bat` can make it hard to copy
160the contents of a file. To prevent this, you can call `bat` with the `-p`/`--plain` option or
161simply pipe the output into `xclip`:
165`bat` will detect that the output is being redirected and print the plain file contents.
169`bat` can be used as a colorizing pager for `man`, by setting the
170`MANPAGER` environment variable:
173export MANPAGER="sh -c 'col -bx | bat -l man -p'"
176(replace `bat` by `batcat` if you are on Debian or Ubuntu)
178It might also be necessary to set `MANROFFOPT="-c"` if you experience
181If you prefer to have this bundled in a new command, you can also use [`batman`](https://github.com/eth-p/bat-extras/blob/master/doc/batman.md).
183Note that the [Manpage syntax](assets/syntaxes/02_Extra/Manpage.sublime-syntax) is developed in this repository and still needs some work.
185Also, note that this will [not work](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/issues/1145) with Mandocs `man` implementation.
187#### `prettier` / `shfmt` / `rustfmt`
189The [`prettybat`](https://github.com/eth-p/bat-extras/blob/master/doc/prettybat.md) script is a wrapper that will format code and print it with `bat`.
194[](https://repology.org/project/bat-cat/versions)
196### On Ubuntu (using `apt`)
197*... and other Debian-based Linux distributions.*
199`bat` is making its way through the [Ubuntu](https://packages.ubuntu.com/eoan/bat) and
200[Debian](https://packages.debian.org/sid/bat) package release process, and is available
201for Ubuntu as of Eoan 19.10. On Debian `bat` is currently only available on the unstable
204If your Ubuntu/Debian installation is new enough you can simply run:
210**Important**: If you install `bat` this way, please note that the executable may be installed as `batcat` instead of `bat` (due to [a name
211clash with another package](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/issues/982)). 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:
214ln -s /usr/bin/batcat ~/.local/bin/bat
217### On Ubuntu (using most recent `.deb` packages)
218*... and other Debian-based Linux distributions.*
220If the package has not yet been promoted to your Ubuntu/Debian installation, or you want
221the most recent release of `bat`, download the latest `.deb` package from the
222[release page](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/releases) and install it via:
225sudo dpkg -i bat_0.17.1_amd64.deb # adapt version number and architecture
230You can install [the `bat` package](https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages?name=bat)
231from the official sources, provided you have the appropriate repository enabled:
239You can install [the `bat` package](https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/bat/)
240from the official sources:
248You can install [the `bat` package](https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=27506) from the official [Fedora Modular](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/modularity/using-modules/) repository.
256You can install [the `bat` package](https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/sys-apps/bat)
257from the official sources:
265You can install `bat` via xbps-install:
272You can install `bat` via pkg:
279You can install a precompiled [`bat` package](https://www.freshports.org/textproc/bat) with pkg:
285or build it on your own from the FreeBSD ports:
288cd /usr/ports/textproc/bat
294You can install `bat` using the [nix package manager](https://nixos.org/nix):
302You can install `bat` with zypper:
310There is currently no recommended snap package available.
311Existing packages may be available, but are not officially supported and may contain [issues](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/issues/1519).
313### On macOS (or Linux) via Homebrew
315You can install `bat` with [Homebrew on MacOS](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/bat) or [Homebrew on Linux](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula-linux/bat):
321### On macOS via MacPorts
323Or install `bat` with [MacPorts](https://ports.macports.org/port/bat/summary):
331There are a few options to install `bat` on Windows. Once you have installed `bat`,
332take a look at the ["Using `bat` on Windows"](#using-bat-on-windows) section.
336You will need to install the [Visual C++ Redistributable](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads) package.
340You can install `bat` via [Chocolatey](https://chocolatey.org/packages/Bat):
347You can install `bat` via [scoop](https://scoop.sh/):
352#### From prebuilt binaries:
354You can download prebuilt binaries from the [Release page](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/releases),
356You will need to install the [Visual C++ Redistributable](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads) package.
360Check out the [Release page](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/releases) for
361prebuilt versions of `bat` for many different architectures. Statically-linked
362binaries are also available: look for archives with `musl` in the file name.
366If you want to build `bat` from source, you need Rust 1.42 or
367higher. You can then use `cargo` to build everything:
370cargo install --locked bat
373Note that additional files like the man page or shell completion
374files can not be installed in this way. They will be generated by `cargo` and should be available in the cargo target folder (under `build`).
378### Highlighting theme
380Use `bat --list-themes` to get a list of all available themes for syntax
381highlighting. To select the `TwoDark` theme, call `bat` with the
382`--theme=TwoDark` option or set the `BAT_THEME` environment variable to
383`TwoDark`. Use `export BAT_THEME="TwoDark"` in your shell's startup file to
384make the change permanent. Alternatively, use `bat`s
385[configuration file](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat#configuration-file).
387If you want to preview the different themes on a custom file, you can use
388the following command (you need [`fzf`](https://github.com/junegunn/fzf) for this):
390bat --list-themes | fzf --preview="bat --theme={} --color=always /path/to/file"
393`bat` looks good on a dark background by default. However, if your terminal uses a
394light background, some themes like `GitHub` or `OneHalfLight` will work better for you.
395You can also use a custom theme by following the
396['Adding new themes' section below](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat#adding-new-themes).
400`bat` has three themes that always use [8-bit colors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code#Colors),
401even when truecolor support is available:
403- `ansi` looks decent on any terminal. It uses 3-bit colors: black, red, green,
404 yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, and white.
405- `base16` is designed for [base16](https://github.com/chriskempson/base16) terminal themes. It uses
406 4-bit colors (3-bit colors plus bright variants) in accordance with the
407 [base16 styling guidelines](https://github.com/chriskempson/base16/blob/master/styling.md).
408- `base16-256` is designed for [base16-shell](https://github.com/chriskempson/base16-shell).
409 It replaces certain bright colors with 8-bit colors from 16 to 21. **Do not** use this simply
410 because you have a 256-color terminal but are not using base16-shell.
412Although these themes are more restricted, they have two advantages over truecolor themes:
414- They harmonize better with other terminal software using 3-bit or 4-bit colors.
415- When you change your terminal theme, `bat` output already on the screen will update to match.
419You can use the `--style` option to control the appearance of `bat`s output.
420You can use `--style=numbers,changes`, for example, to show only Git changes
421and line numbers but no grid and no file header. Set the `BAT_STYLE` environment
422variable to make these changes permanent or use `bat`s
423[configuration file](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat#configuration-file).
425### Adding new syntaxes / language definitions
427Should you find that a particular syntax is not available within `bat`, you can follow these
428instructions to easily add new syntaxes to your current `bat` installation.
430`bat` uses the excellent [`syntect`](https://github.com/trishume/syntect/)
431library for syntax highlighting. `syntect` can read any
432[Sublime Text `.sublime-syntax` file](https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/syntax.html)
435A good resource for finding Sublime Syntax packages is [Package Control](https://packagecontrol.io/). Once you found a
4381. Create a folder with syntax definition files:
441 mkdir -p "$(bat --config-dir)/syntaxes"
442 cd "$(bat --config-dir)/syntaxes"
444 # Put new '.sublime-syntax' language definition files
445 # in this folder (or its subdirectories), for example:
446 git clone https://github.com/tellnobody1/sublime-purescript-syntax
4492. Now use the following command to parse these files into a binary cache:
4553. Finally, use `bat --list-languages` to check if the new languages are available.
457 If you ever want to go back to the default settings, call:
4634. If you think that a specific syntax should be included in `bat` by default, please
464 consider opening a "syntax request" ticket after reading the policies and
465 instructions [here](doc/assets.md): [Open Syntax Request](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/issues/new?labels=syntax-request&template=syntax_request.md).
469This works very similar to how we add new syntax definitions.
471First, create a folder with the new syntax highlighting themes:
473mkdir -p "$(bat --config-dir)/themes"
474cd "$(bat --config-dir)/themes"
476# Download a theme in '.tmTheme' format, for example:
477git clone https://github.com/greggb/sublime-snazzy
479# Update the binary cache
483Finally, use `bat --list-themes` to check if the new themes are available.
485### Adding or changing file type associations
487You can add new (or change existing) file name patterns using the `--map-syntax`
488command line option. The option takes an argument of the form `pattern:syntax` where
489`pattern` is a glob pattern that is matched against the file name and
490the absolute file path. The `syntax` part is the full name of a supported language
491(use `bat --list-languages` for an overview).
493Note: You probably want to use this option as an entry in `bat`s configuration file instead
494of passing it on the command line (see below).
496Example: To use "INI" syntax highlighting for all files with a `.conf` file extension, use
498--map-syntax='*.conf:INI'
501Example: To open all files called `.ignore` (exact match) with the "Git Ignore" syntax, use:
503--map-syntax='.ignore:Git Ignore'
506Example: To open all `.conf` files in subfolders of `/etc/apache2` with the "Apache Conf"
507syntax, use (this mapping is already built in):
509--map-syntax='/etc/apache2/**/*.conf:Apache Conf'
512### Using a different pager
514`bat` uses the pager that is specified in the `PAGER` environment variable. If this variable is not
515set, `less` is used by default. If you want to use a different pager, you can either modify the
516`PAGER` variable or set the `BAT_PAGER` environment variable to override what is specified in
519If you want to pass command-line arguments to the pager, you can also set them via the
520`PAGER`/`BAT_PAGER` variables:
523export BAT_PAGER="less -RF"
526Instead of using environment variables, you can also use `bat`s [configuration file](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat#configuration-file) to configure the pager (`--pager` option).
528**Note**: By default, if the pager is set to `less` (and no command-line options are specified),
529`bat` will pass the following command line options to the pager: `-R`/`--RAW-CONTROL-CHARS`,
530`-F`/`--quit-if-one-screen` and `-X`/`--no-init`. The last option (`-X`) is only used for `less`
531versions older than 530.
533The `-R` option is needed to interpret ANSI colors correctly. The second option (`-F`) instructs
534less to exit immediately if the output size is smaller than the vertical size of the terminal.
535This is convenient for small files because you do not have to press `q` to quit the pager. The
536third option (`-X`) is needed to fix a bug with the `--quit-if-one-screen` feature in old versions
537of `less`. Unfortunately, it also breaks mouse-wheel support in `less`.
539If you want to enable mouse-wheel scrolling on older versions of `less`, you can pass just `-R` (as
540in the example above, this will disable the quit-if-one-screen feature). For less 530 or newer,
541it should work out of the box.
545`bat` expands tabs to 4 spaces by itself, not relying on the pager. To change this, simply add the
546`--tabs` argument with the number of spaces you want to be displayed.
548**Note**: Defining tab stops for the pager (via the `--pager` argument by `bat`, or via the `LESS`
549environment variable for `less`) won't be taken into account because the pager will already get
550expanded spaces instead of tabs. This behaviour is added to avoid indentation issues caused by the
551sidebar. Calling `bat` with `--tabs=0` will override it and let tabs be consumed by the pager.
555If you make use of the dark mode feature in macOS, you might want to configure `bat` to use a different
556theme based on the OS theme. The following snippet uses the `default` theme when in the _dark mode_
557and the `GitHub` theme when in the _light mode_.
560alias cat="bat --theme=\$(defaults read -globalDomain AppleInterfaceStyle &> /dev/null && echo default || echo GitHub)"
566`bat` can also be customized with a configuration file. The location of the file is dependent
567on your operating system. To get the default path for your system, call
572Alternatively, you can use the `BAT_CONFIG_PATH` environment variable to point `bat` to a
573non-default location of the configuration file:
575export BAT_CONFIG_PATH="/path/to/bat.conf"
578A default configuration file can be created with the `--generate-config-file` option.
580bat --generate-config-file
585The 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.
587Example configuration file:
589# Set the theme to "TwoDark"
592# Show line numbers, Git modifications and file header (but no grid)
593--style="numbers,changes,header"
595# Use italic text on the terminal (not supported on all terminals)
598# Use C++ syntax for .ino files
599--map-syntax "*.ino:C++"
602## Using `bat` on Windows
604`bat` mostly works out-of-the-box on Windows, but a few features may need extra configuration.
608You will need to install the [Visual C++ Redistributable](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads) package.
612Windows only includes a very limited pager in the form of `more`. You can download a Windows binary
613for `less` [from its homepage](http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/download.html) or [through
614Chocolatey](https://chocolatey.org/packages/Less). To use it, place the binary in a directory in
615your `PATH` or [define an environment variable](#using-a-different-pager). The [Chocolatey package](#on-windows) installs `less` automatically.
619Windows 10 natively supports colors in both `conhost.exe` (Command Prompt) and PowerShell since
620[v1511](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_version_history#Version_1511_(November_Update)), as
621well as in newer versions of bash. On earlier versions of Windows, you can use
622[Cmder](http://cmder.net/), which includes [ConEmu](https://conemu.github.io/).
624**Note:** The Git and MSYS versions of `less` do not correctly interpret colors on Windows. If you
625don’t have any other pagers installed, you can disable paging entirely by passing `--paging=never`
626or by setting `BAT_PAGER` to an empty string.
630`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)`
632This can be solved by creating a wrapper or adding the following function to your `.bash_profile` file:
638 for index in $(seq 0 ${#args[@]}) ; do
639 case "${args[index]}" in
641 *) [ -e "${args[index]}" ] && args[index]="$(cygpath --windows "${args[index]}")";;
644 command bat "${args[@]}"
650### Terminals & colors
652`bat` handles terminals *with* and *without* truecolor support. However, the colors in most syntax
653highlighting themes are not optimized for 8-bit colors. It is therefore strongly recommended
654that you use a terminal with 24-bit truecolor support (`terminator`, `konsole`, `iTerm2`, ...),
655or use one of the basic [8-bit themes](#8-bit-themes) designed for a restricted set of colors.
656See [this article](https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728) for more details and a full list of
657terminals with truecolor support.
659Make sure that your truecolor terminal sets the `COLORTERM` variable to either `truecolor` or
660`24bit`. Otherwise, `bat` will not be able to determine whether or not 24-bit escape sequences
661are supported (and fall back to 8-bit colors).
663### Line numbers and grid are hardly visible
665Please try a different theme (see `bat --list-themes` for a list). The `OneHalfDark` and
666`OneHalfLight` themes provide grid and line colors that are brighter.
670`bat` natively supports UTF-8 as well as UTF-16. For every other file encoding, you may need to
671convert to UTF-8 first because the encodings can typically not be auto-detected. You can `iconv`
673Example: if you have a PHP file in Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) encoding, you can call:
675iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 my-file.php | bat
677Note: you might have to use the `-l`/`--language` option if the syntax can not be auto-detected
683# Recursive clone to retrieve all submodules
684git clone --recursive https://github.com/sharkdp/bat
686# Build (debug version)
690# Run unit tests and integration tests
693# Install (release version)
694cargo install --path . --locked
696# Build a bat binary with modified syntaxes and themes
698cargo install --path . --locked --force
701If you want to build an application that uses `bat`s pretty-printing
702features as a library, check out the [the API documentation](https://docs.rs/bat/).
703Note that you have to use either `regex-onig` or `regex-fancy` as a feature
704when you depend on `bat` as a library.
708Take a look at the [`CONTRIBUTING.md`](CONTRIBUTING.md) guide.
712- [sharkdp](https://github.com/sharkdp)
713- [eth-p](https://github.com/eth-p)
714- [keith-hall](https://github.com/keith-hall)
715- [Enselic](https://github.com/Enselic)
717## Project goals and alternatives
719`bat` tries to achieve the following goals:
721- Provide beautiful, advanced syntax highlighting
722- Integrate with Git to show file modifications
723- Be a drop-in replacement for (POSIX) `cat`
724- Offer a user-friendly command-line interface
726There are a lot of alternatives, if you are looking for similar programs. See
727[this document](doc/alternatives.md) for a comparison.
730Copyright (c) 2018-2020 [bat-developers](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat).
732`bat` is made available under the terms of either the MIT License or the Apache License 2.0, at your option.
734See the [LICENSE-APACHE](LICENSE-APACHE) and [LICENSE-MIT](LICENSE-MIT) files for license details.
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