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>
16 [<a href="doc/README-zh.md">中文</a>]
17 [<a href="doc/README-ja.md">日本語</a>]
18 [<a href="doc/README-ko.md">한국어</a>]
19 [<a href="doc/README-ru.md">Русский</a>]
24A special *thank you* goes to our biggest <a href="doc/sponsors.md">sponsors</a>:<br>
25<a href="https://workos.com/?utm_campaign=github_repo&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=bat&utm_source=github">
26 <img src="doc/sponsors/workos-logo-white-bg.svg" width="200" alt="WorkOS">
28 <strong>Your app, enterprise-ready.</strong>
30 <sub>Start selling to enterprise customers with just a few lines of code.</sub>
32 <sup>Add Single Sign-On (and more) in minutes instead of months.</sup>
35### Syntax highlighting
37`bat` supports syntax highlighting for a large number of programming and markup
40
44`bat` communicates with `git` to show modifications with respect to the index
47
49### Show non-printable characters
51You can use the `-A`/`--show-all` option to show and highlight non-printable
54
58By default, `bat` pipes its own output to a pager (e.g. `less`) if the output is too large for one screen.
59If 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.
60If you intend to alias `cat` to `bat` in your shell configuration, you can use `alias cat='bat --paging=never'` to preserve the default behavior.
62#### File concatenation
64Even with a pager set, you can still use `bat` to concatenate files :wink:.
65Whenever `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.
69Display a single file on the terminal
75Display multiple files at once
81Read from stdin, determine the syntax automatically (note, highlighting will
82only work if the syntax can be determined from the first line of the file,
83usually through a shebang such as `#!/bin/sh`)
86> curl -s https://sh.rustup.rs | bat
89Read from stdin, specify the language explicitly
92> yaml2json .travis.yml | json_pp | bat -l json
95Show and highlight non-printable characters:
100Use it as a `cat` replacement:
103bat > note.md # quickly create a new file
105bat header.md content.md footer.md > document.md
107bat -n main.rs # show line numbers (only)
109bat f - g # output 'f', then stdin, then 'g'.
112### Integration with other tools
116You can use `bat` as a previewer for [`fzf`](https://github.com/junegunn/fzf). To do this,
117use `bat`s `--color=always` option to force colorized output. You can also use `--line-range`
118option to restrict the load times for long files:
121fzf --preview 'bat --color=always --style=numbers --line-range=:500 {}'
124For more information, see [`fzf`'s `README`](https://github.com/junegunn/fzf#preview-window).
128You can use the `-exec` option of `find` to preview all search results with `bat`:
134If you happen to use [`fd`](https://github.com/sharkdp/fd), you can use the `-X`/`--exec-batch` option to do the same:
142With [`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.
150`bat` can be combined with `tail -f` to continuously monitor a given file with syntax highlighting.
153tail -f /var/log/pacman.log | bat --paging=never -l log
156Note that we have to switch off paging in order for this to work. We have also specified the syntax
157explicitly (`-l log`), as it can not be auto-detected in this case.
161You can combine `bat` with `git show` to view an older version of a given file with proper syntax
165git show v0.6.0:src/main.rs | bat -l rs
170You can combine `bat` with `git diff` to view lines around code changes with proper syntax
174 git diff --name-only --diff-filter=d | xargs bat --diff
177If you prefer to use this as a separate tool, check out `batdiff` in [`bat-extras`](https://github.com/eth-p/bat-extras).
179If you are looking for more support for git and diff operations, check out [`delta`](https://github.com/dandavison/delta).
183The line numbers and Git modification markers in the output of `bat` can make it hard to copy
184the contents of a file. To prevent this, you can call `bat` with the `-p`/`--plain` option or
185simply pipe the output into `xclip`:
189`bat` will detect that the output is being redirected and print the plain file contents.
193`bat` can be used as a colorizing pager for `man`, by setting the
194`MANPAGER` environment variable:
197export MANPAGER="sh -c 'col -bx | bat -l man -p'"
200(replace `bat` with `batcat` if you are on Debian or Ubuntu)
202It might also be necessary to set `MANROFFOPT="-c"` if you experience
205If 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).
207Note that the [Manpage syntax](assets/syntaxes/02_Extra/Manpage.sublime-syntax) is developed in this repository and still needs some work.
209Also, note that this will [not work](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/issues/1145) with Mandocs `man` implementation.
211#### `prettier` / `shfmt` / `rustfmt`
213The [`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`.
218[](https://repology.org/project/bat-cat/versions)
220### On Ubuntu (using `apt`)
221*... and other Debian-based Linux distributions.*
223`bat` is available on [Ubuntu since 20.04 ("Focal")](https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=bat&exact=1) and [Debian since August 2021 (Debian 11 - "Bullseye")](https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/bat).
225If your Ubuntu/Debian installation is new enough you can simply run:
231**Important**: If you install `bat` this way, please note that the executable may be installed as `batcat` instead of `bat` (due to [a name
232clash 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:
235ln -s /usr/bin/batcat ~/.local/bin/bat
238### On Ubuntu (using most recent `.deb` packages)
239*... and other Debian-based Linux distributions.*
241If the package has not yet been promoted to your Ubuntu/Debian installation, or you want
242the most recent release of `bat`, download the latest `.deb` package from the
243[release page](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/releases) and install it via:
246sudo dpkg -i bat_0.18.3_amd64.deb # adapt version number and architecture
251You can install [the `bat` package](https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages?name=bat)
252from the official sources, provided you have the appropriate repository enabled:
260You can install [the `bat` package](https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/bat/)
261from the official sources:
269You 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.
277You can install [the `bat` package](https://github.com/funtoo/dev-kit/tree/1.4-release/sys-apps/bat) from dev-kit.
285You can install [the `bat` package](https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/sys-apps/bat)
286from the official sources:
294You can install `bat` via xbps-install:
301You can install `bat` via pkg:
308You can install a precompiled [`bat` package](https://www.freshports.org/textproc/bat) with pkg:
314or build it on your own from the FreeBSD ports:
317cd /usr/ports/textproc/bat
323You can install `bat` package using [`pkg_add(1)`](https://man.openbsd.org/pkg_add.1):
331You can install `bat` using the [nix package manager](https://nixos.org/nix):
339You can install `bat` with zypper:
347There is currently no recommended snap package available.
348Existing packages may be available, but are not officially supported and may contain [issues](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/issues/1519).
350### On macOS (or Linux) via Homebrew
352You can install `bat` with [Homebrew on MacOS](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/bat) or [Homebrew on Linux](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula-linux/bat):
358### On macOS via MacPorts
360Or install `bat` with [MacPorts](https://ports.macports.org/port/bat/summary):
368There are a few options to install `bat` on Windows. Once you have installed `bat`,
369take a look at the ["Using `bat` on Windows"](#using-bat-on-windows) section.
373You will need to install the [Visual C++ Redistributable](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads) package.
377You can install `bat` via [Chocolatey](https://chocolatey.org/packages/Bat):
384You can install `bat` via [scoop](https://scoop.sh/):
389#### From prebuilt binaries:
391You can download prebuilt binaries from the [Release page](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/releases),
393You will need to install the [Visual C++ Redistributable](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads) package.
397Check out the [Release page](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/releases) for
398prebuilt versions of `bat` for many different architectures. Statically-linked
399binaries are also available: look for archives with `musl` in the file name.
403If you want to build `bat` from source, you need Rust 1.51 or
404higher. You can then use `cargo` to build everything:
407cargo install --locked bat
410Note that additional files like the man page or shell completion
411files can not be installed in this way. They will be generated by `cargo` and should be available in the cargo target folder (under `build`).
415### Highlighting theme
417Use `bat --list-themes` to get a list of all available themes for syntax
418highlighting. To select the `TwoDark` theme, call `bat` with the
419`--theme=TwoDark` option or set the `BAT_THEME` environment variable to
420`TwoDark`. Use `export BAT_THEME="TwoDark"` in your shell's startup file to
421make the change permanent. Alternatively, use `bat`s
422[configuration file](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat#configuration-file).
424If you want to preview the different themes on a custom file, you can use
425the following command (you need [`fzf`](https://github.com/junegunn/fzf) for this):
427bat --list-themes | fzf --preview="bat --theme={} --color=always /path/to/file"
430`bat` looks good on a dark background by default. However, if your terminal uses a
431light background, some themes like `GitHub` or `OneHalfLight` will work better for you.
432You can also use a custom theme by following the
433['Adding new themes' section below](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat#adding-new-themes).
437`bat` has three themes that always use [8-bit colors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code#Colors),
438even when truecolor support is available:
440- `ansi` looks decent on any terminal. It uses 3-bit colors: black, red, green,
441 yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, and white.
442- `base16` is designed for [base16](https://github.com/chriskempson/base16) terminal themes. It uses
443 4-bit colors (3-bit colors plus bright variants) in accordance with the
444 [base16 styling guidelines](https://github.com/chriskempson/base16/blob/master/styling.md).
445- `base16-256` is designed for [base16-shell](https://github.com/chriskempson/base16-shell).
446 It replaces certain bright colors with 8-bit colors from 16 to 21. **Do not** use this simply
447 because you have a 256-color terminal but are not using base16-shell.
449Although these themes are more restricted, they have three advantages over truecolor themes. They:
451- Enjoy maximum compatibility. Some terminal utilities do not support more than 3-bit colors.
452- Adapt to terminal theme changes. Even for already printed output.
453- Visually harmonize better with other terminal software.
457You can use the `--style` option to control the appearance of `bat`s output.
458You can use `--style=numbers,changes`, for example, to show only Git changes
459and line numbers but no grid and no file header. Set the `BAT_STYLE` environment
460variable to make these changes permanent or use `bat`s
461[configuration file](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat#configuration-file).
463### Adding new syntaxes / language definitions
465Should you find that a particular syntax is not available within `bat`, you can follow these
466instructions to easily add new syntaxes to your current `bat` installation.
468`bat` uses the excellent [`syntect`](https://github.com/trishume/syntect/)
469library for syntax highlighting. `syntect` can read any
470[Sublime Text `.sublime-syntax` file](https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/syntax.html)
473A good resource for finding Sublime Syntax packages is [Package Control](https://packagecontrol.io/). Once you found a
4761. Create a folder with syntax definition files:
479 mkdir -p "$(bat --config-dir)/syntaxes"
480 cd "$(bat --config-dir)/syntaxes"
482 # Put new '.sublime-syntax' language definition files
483 # in this folder (or its subdirectories), for example:
484 git clone https://github.com/tellnobody1/sublime-purescript-syntax
4872. Now use the following command to parse these files into a binary cache:
4933. Finally, use `bat --list-languages` to check if the new languages are available.
495 If you ever want to go back to the default settings, call:
5014. If you think that a specific syntax should be included in `bat` by default, please
502 consider opening a "syntax request" ticket after reading the policies and
503 instructions [here](doc/assets.md): [Open Syntax Request](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/issues/new?labels=syntax-request&template=syntax_request.md).
507This works very similar to how we add new syntax definitions.
509First, create a folder with the new syntax highlighting themes:
511mkdir -p "$(bat --config-dir)/themes"
512cd "$(bat --config-dir)/themes"
514# Download a theme in '.tmTheme' format, for example:
515git clone https://github.com/greggb/sublime-snazzy
517# Update the binary cache
521Finally, use `bat --list-themes` to check if the new themes are available.
523### Adding or changing file type associations
525You can add new (or change existing) file name patterns using the `--map-syntax`
526command line option. The option takes an argument of the form `pattern:syntax` where
527`pattern` is a glob pattern that is matched against the file name and
528the absolute file path. The `syntax` part is the full name of a supported language
529(use `bat --list-languages` for an overview).
531**Note:** You probably want to use this option as [an entry in `bat`'s configuration file](#configuration-file)
532for persistence instead of passing it on the command line as a one-off. Generally
533you'd just use `-l` if you want to manually specify a language for a file.
535Example: To use "INI" syntax highlighting for all files with a `.conf` file extension, use
537--map-syntax='*.conf:INI'
540Example: To open all files called `.ignore` (exact match) with the "Git Ignore" syntax, use:
542--map-syntax='.ignore:Git Ignore'
545Example: To open all `.conf` files in subfolders of `/etc/apache2` with the "Apache Conf"
546syntax, use (this mapping is already built in):
548--map-syntax='/etc/apache2/**/*.conf:Apache Conf'
551### Using a different pager
553`bat` uses the pager that is specified in the `PAGER` environment variable. If this variable is not
554set, `less` is used by default. If you want to use a different pager, you can either modify the
555`PAGER` variable or set the `BAT_PAGER` environment variable to override what is specified in
558**Note**: If `PAGER` is `more` or `most`, `bat` will silently use `less` instead to ensure support for colors.
560If you want to pass command-line arguments to the pager, you can also set them via the
561`PAGER`/`BAT_PAGER` variables:
564export BAT_PAGER="less -RF"
567Instead 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).
569**Note**: By default, if the pager is set to `less` (and no command-line options are specified),
570`bat` will pass the following command line options to the pager: `-R`/`--RAW-CONTROL-CHARS`,
571`-F`/`--quit-if-one-screen` and `-X`/`--no-init`. The last option (`-X`) is only used for `less`
572versions older than 530.
574The `-R` option is needed to interpret ANSI colors correctly. The second option (`-F`) instructs
575less to exit immediately if the output size is smaller than the vertical size of the terminal.
576This is convenient for small files because you do not have to press `q` to quit the pager. The
577third option (`-X`) is needed to fix a bug with the `--quit-if-one-screen` feature in old versions
578of `less`. Unfortunately, it also breaks mouse-wheel support in `less`.
580If you want to enable mouse-wheel scrolling on older versions of `less`, you can pass just `-R` (as
581in the example above, this will disable the quit-if-one-screen feature). For less 530 or newer,
582it should work out of the box.
586`bat` expands tabs to 4 spaces by itself, not relying on the pager. To change this, simply add the
587`--tabs` argument with the number of spaces you want to be displayed.
589**Note**: Defining tab stops for the pager (via the `--pager` argument by `bat`, or via the `LESS`
590environment variable for `less`) won't be taken into account because the pager will already get
591expanded spaces instead of tabs. This behaviour is added to avoid indentation issues caused by the
592sidebar. Calling `bat` with `--tabs=0` will override it and let tabs be consumed by the pager.
596If you make use of the dark mode feature in macOS, you might want to configure `bat` to use a different
597theme based on the OS theme. The following snippet uses the `default` theme when in the _dark mode_
598and the `GitHub` theme when in the _light mode_.
601alias cat="bat --theme=\$(defaults read -globalDomain AppleInterfaceStyle &> /dev/null && echo default || echo GitHub)"
607`bat` can also be customized with a configuration file. The location of the file is dependent
608on your operating system. To get the default path for your system, call
613Alternatively, you can use the `BAT_CONFIG_PATH` environment variable to point `bat` to a
614non-default location of the configuration file:
616export BAT_CONFIG_PATH="/path/to/bat.conf"
619A default configuration file can be created with the `--generate-config-file` option.
621bat --generate-config-file
626The 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.
628Example configuration file:
630# Set the theme to "TwoDark"
633# Show line numbers, Git modifications and file header (but no grid)
634--style="numbers,changes,header"
636# Use italic text on the terminal (not supported on all terminals)
639# Use C++ syntax for Arduino .ino files
640--map-syntax "*.ino:C++"
643## Using `bat` on Windows
645`bat` mostly works out-of-the-box on Windows, but a few features may need extra configuration.
649You will need to install the [Visual C++ Redistributable](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads) package.
653Windows only includes a very limited pager in the form of `more`. You can download a Windows binary
654for `less` [from its homepage](http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/download.html) or [through
655Chocolatey](https://chocolatey.org/packages/Less). To use it, place the binary in a directory in
656your `PATH` or [define an environment variable](#using-a-different-pager). The [Chocolatey package](#on-windows) installs `less` automatically.
660Windows 10 natively supports colors in both `conhost.exe` (Command Prompt) and PowerShell since
661[v1511](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_version_history#Version_1511_(November_Update)), as
662well as in newer versions of bash. On earlier versions of Windows, you can use
663[Cmder](http://cmder.net/), which includes [ConEmu](https://conemu.github.io/).
665**Note:** The Git and MSYS versions of `less` do not correctly interpret colors on Windows. If you
666don’t have any other pagers installed, you can disable paging entirely by passing `--paging=never`
667or by setting `BAT_PAGER` to an empty string.
671`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)`
673This can be solved by creating a wrapper or adding the following function to your `.bash_profile` file:
679 for index in $(seq 0 ${#args[@]}) ; do
680 case "${args[index]}" in
682 *) [ -e "${args[index]}" ] && args[index]="$(cygpath --windows "${args[index]}")";;
685 command bat "${args[@]}"
693If an input file contains color codes or other ANSI escape sequences or control characters, `bat` will have problems
694performing syntax highlighting and text wrapping, and thus the output can become garbled.
695When displaying such files it is recommended to disable both syntax highlighting and wrapping by
696passing the `--color=never --wrap=never` options to `bat`.
698### Terminals & colors
700`bat` handles terminals *with* and *without* truecolor support. However, the colors in most syntax
701highlighting themes are not optimized for 8-bit colors. It is therefore strongly recommended
702that you use a terminal with 24-bit truecolor support (`terminator`, `konsole`, `iTerm2`, ...),
703or use one of the basic [8-bit themes](#8-bit-themes) designed for a restricted set of colors.
704See [this article](https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728) for more details and a full list of
705terminals with truecolor support.
707Make sure that your truecolor terminal sets the `COLORTERM` variable to either `truecolor` or
708`24bit`. Otherwise, `bat` will not be able to determine whether or not 24-bit escape sequences
709are supported (and fall back to 8-bit colors).
711### Line numbers and grid are hardly visible
713Please try a different theme (see `bat --list-themes` for a list). The `OneHalfDark` and
714`OneHalfLight` themes provide grid and line colors that are brighter.
718`bat` natively supports UTF-8 as well as UTF-16. For every other file encoding, you may need to
719convert to UTF-8 first because the encodings can typically not be auto-detected. You can `iconv`
721Example: if you have a PHP file in Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) encoding, you can call:
723iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 my-file.php | bat
725Note: you might have to use the `-l`/`--language` option if the syntax can not be auto-detected
731# Recursive clone to retrieve all submodules
732git clone --recursive https://github.com/sharkdp/bat
734# Build (debug version)
738# Run unit tests and integration tests
741# Install (release version)
742cargo install --path . --locked
744# Build a bat binary with modified syntaxes and themes
746cargo install --path . --locked --force
749If you want to build an application that uses `bat`s pretty-printing
750features as a library, check out the [the API documentation](https://docs.rs/bat/).
751Note that you have to use either `regex-onig` or `regex-fancy` as a feature
752when you depend on `bat` as a library.
756Take a look at the [`CONTRIBUTING.md`](CONTRIBUTING.md) guide.
760- [sharkdp](https://github.com/sharkdp)
761- [eth-p](https://github.com/eth-p)
762- [keith-hall](https://github.com/keith-hall)
763- [Enselic](https://github.com/Enselic)
765## Security vulnerabilities
767Please contact [David Peter](https://david-peter.de/) via email if you want to report a vulnerability in `bat`.
769## Project goals and alternatives
771`bat` tries to achieve the following goals:
773- Provide beautiful, advanced syntax highlighting
774- Integrate with Git to show file modifications
775- Be a drop-in replacement for (POSIX) `cat`
776- Offer a user-friendly command-line interface
778There are a lot of alternatives, if you are looking for similar programs. See
779[this document](doc/alternatives.md) for a comparison.
782Copyright (c) 2018-2021 [bat-developers](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat).
784`bat` is made available under the terms of either the MIT License or the Apache License 2.0, at your option.
786See the [LICENSE-APACHE](LICENSE-APACHE) and [LICENSE-MIT](LICENSE-MIT) files for license details.
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