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 the `-exec` option of `find` to preview all search results with `bat`:
104If you happen to use [`fd`](https://github.com/sharkdp/fd), you can use the `-X`/`--exec-batch` option to do the same:
111With [`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.
119`bat` can be combined with `tail -f` to continuously monitor a given file with syntax highlighting.
121tail -f /var/log/pacman.log | bat --paging=never -l log
123Note that we have to switch off paging in order for this to work. We have also specified the syntax
124explicitly (`-l log`), as it can not be auto-detected in this case.
128You can combine `bat` with `git show` to view an older version of a given file with proper syntax
131git show v0.6.0:src/main.rs | bat -l rs
136You can combine `bat` with `git diff` to view lines around code changes with proper syntax
140 git diff --name-only --diff-filter=d | xargs bat --diff
143If you prefer to use this as a separate tool, check out `batdiff` in [`bat-extras`](https://github.com/eth-p/bat-extras).
145If you are looking for more support for git and diff operations, check out [`delta`](https://github.com/dandavison/delta).
149The line numbers and Git modification markers in the output of `bat` can make it hard to copy
150the contents of a file. To prevent this, you can call `bat` with the `-p`/`--plain` option or
151simply pipe the output into `xclip`:
155`bat` will detect that the output is being redirected and print the plain file contents.
159`bat` can be used as a colorizing pager for `man`, by setting the
160`MANPAGER` environment variable:
163export MANPAGER="sh -c 'col -bx | bat -l man -p'"
166(replace `bat` by `batcat` if you are on Debian or Ubuntu)
168It might also be necessary to set `MANROFFOPT="-c"` if you experience
171If 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).
173Note that the [Manpage syntax](assets/syntaxes/02_Extra/Manpage.sublime-syntax) is developed in this repository and still needs some work.
175Also, note that this will [not work](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/issues/1145) with Mandocs `man` implementation.
177#### `prettier` / `shfmt` / `rustfmt`
179The [`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`.
184[](https://repology.org/project/bat-cat/versions)
186### On Ubuntu (using `apt`)
187*... and other Debian-based Linux distributions.*
189`bat` is making its way through the [Ubuntu](https://packages.ubuntu.com/eoan/bat) and
190[Debian](https://packages.debian.org/sid/bat) package release process, and is available
191for Ubuntu as of Eoan 19.10. On Debian `bat` is currently only available on the unstable
194If your Ubuntu/Debian installation is new enough you can simply run:
200**Important**: If you install `bat` this way, please note that the executable may be installed as `batcat` instead of `bat` (due to [a name
201clash 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:
204ln -s /usr/bin/batcat ~/.local/bin/bat
207### On Ubuntu (using most recent `.deb` packages)
208*... and other Debian-based Linux distributions.*
210If the package has not yet been promoted to your Ubuntu/Debian installation, or you want
211the most recent release of `bat`, download the latest `.deb` package from the
212[release page](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/releases) and install it via:
215sudo dpkg -i bat_0.17.1_amd64.deb # adapt version number and architecture
220You can install [the `bat` package](https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages?name=bat)
221from the official sources, provided you have the appropriate repository enabled:
229You can install [the `bat` package](https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/bat/)
230from the official sources:
238You 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.
246You can install [the `bat` package](https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/sys-apps/bat)
247from the official sources:
255You can install `bat` via xbps-install:
262You can install `bat` via pkg:
269You can install a precompiled [`bat` package](https://www.freshports.org/textproc/bat) with pkg:
275or build it on your own from the FreeBSD ports:
278cd /usr/ports/textproc/bat
284You can install `bat` using the [nix package manager](https://nixos.org/nix):
292You can install `bat` with zypper:
300There is currently no recommended snap package available.
301Existing packages may be available, but are not officially supported and may contain [issues](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/issues/1519).
303### On macOS (or Linux) via Homebrew
305You can install `bat` with [Homebrew on MacOS](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/bat) or [Homebrew on Linux](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula-linux/bat):
311### On macOS via MacPorts
313Or install `bat` with [MacPorts](https://ports.macports.org/port/bat/summary):
321There are a few options to install `bat` on Windows. Once you have installed `bat`,
322take a look at the ["Using `bat` on Windows"](#using-bat-on-windows) section.
326You will need to install the [Visual C++ Redistributable](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads) package.
330You can install `bat` via [Chocolatey](https://chocolatey.org/packages/Bat):
337You can install `bat` via [scoop](https://scoop.sh/):
342#### From prebuilt binaries:
344You can download prebuilt binaries from the [Release page](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/releases),
346You will need to install the [Visual C++ Redistributable](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads) package.
350Check out the [Release page](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/releases) for
351prebuilt versions of `bat` for many different architectures. Statically-linked
352binaries are also available: look for archives with `musl` in the file name.
356If you want to build `bat` from source, you need Rust 1.42 or
357higher. You can then use `cargo` to build everything:
360cargo install --locked bat
363Note that additional files like the man page or shell completion
364files can not be installed in this way. They will be generated by `cargo` and should be available in the cargo target folder (under `build`).
368### Highlighting theme
370Use `bat --list-themes` to get a list of all available themes for syntax
371highlighting. To select the `TwoDark` theme, call `bat` with the
372`--theme=TwoDark` option or set the `BAT_THEME` environment variable to
373`TwoDark`. Use `export BAT_THEME="TwoDark"` in your shell's startup file to
374make the change permanent. Alternatively, use `bat`s
375[configuration file](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat#configuration-file).
377If you want to preview the different themes on a custom file, you can use
378the following command (you need [`fzf`](https://github.com/junegunn/fzf) for this):
380bat --list-themes | fzf --preview="bat --theme={} --color=always /path/to/file"
383`bat` looks good on a dark background by default. However, if your terminal uses a
384light background, some themes like `GitHub` or `OneHalfLight` will work better for you.
385You can also use a custom theme by following the
386['Adding new themes' section below](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat#adding-new-themes).
390`bat` has three themes that always use [8-bit colors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code#Colors),
391even when truecolor support is available:
393- `ansi` looks decent on any terminal. It uses 3-bit colors: black, red, green,
394 yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, and white.
395- `base16` is designed for [base16](https://github.com/chriskempson/base16) terminal themes. It uses
396 4-bit colors (3-bit colors plus bright variants) in accordance with the
397 [base16 styling guidelines](https://github.com/chriskempson/base16/blob/master/styling.md).
398- `base16-256` is designed for [base16-shell](https://github.com/chriskempson/base16-shell).
399 It replaces certain bright colors with 8-bit colors from 16 to 21. **Do not** use this simply
400 because you have a 256-color terminal but are not using base16-shell.
402Although these themes are more restricted, they have two advantages over truecolor themes:
404- They harmonize better with other terminal software using 3-bit or 4-bit colors.
405- When you change your terminal theme, `bat` output already on the screen will update to match.
409You can use the `--style` option to control the appearance of `bat`s output.
410You can use `--style=numbers,changes`, for example, to show only Git changes
411and line numbers but no grid and no file header. Set the `BAT_STYLE` environment
412variable to make these changes permanent or use `bat`s
413[configuration file](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat#configuration-file).
415### Adding new syntaxes / language definitions
417Should you find that a particular syntax is not available within `bat`, you can follow these
418instructions to easily add new syntaxes to your current `bat` installation.
420`bat` uses the excellent [`syntect`](https://github.com/trishume/syntect/)
421library for syntax highlighting. `syntect` can read any
422[Sublime Text `.sublime-syntax` file](https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/syntax.html)
425A good resource for finding Sublime Syntax packages is [Package Control](https://packagecontrol.io/). Once you found a
4281. Create a folder with syntax definition files:
431 mkdir -p "$(bat --config-dir)/syntaxes"
432 cd "$(bat --config-dir)/syntaxes"
434 # Put new '.sublime-syntax' language definition files
435 # in this folder (or its subdirectories), for example:
436 git clone https://github.com/tellnobody1/sublime-purescript-syntax
4392. Now use the following command to parse these files into a binary cache:
4453. Finally, use `bat --list-languages` to check if the new languages are available.
447 If you ever want to go back to the default settings, call:
4534. If you think that a specific syntax should be included in `bat` by default, please
454 consider opening a "syntax request" ticket after reading the policies and
455 instructions [here](doc/assets.md): [Open Syntax Request](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/issues/new?labels=syntax-request&template=syntax_request.md).
459This works very similar to how we add new syntax definitions.
461First, create a folder with the new syntax highlighting themes:
463mkdir -p "$(bat --config-dir)/themes"
464cd "$(bat --config-dir)/themes"
466# Download a theme in '.tmTheme' format, for example:
467git clone https://github.com/greggb/sublime-snazzy
469# Update the binary cache
473Finally, use `bat --list-themes` to check if the new themes are available.
475### Adding or changing file type associations
477You can add new (or change existing) file name patterns using the `--map-syntax`
478command line option. The option takes an argument of the form `pattern:syntax` where
479`pattern` is a glob pattern that is matched against the file name and
480the absolute file path. The `syntax` part is the full name of a supported language
481(use `bat --list-languages` for an overview).
483Note: You probably want to use this option as an entry in `bat`s configuration file instead
484of passing it on the command line (see below).
486Example: To use "INI" syntax highlighting for all files with a `.conf` file extension, use
488--map-syntax='*.conf:INI'
491Example: To open all files called `.ignore` (exact match) with the "Git Ignore" syntax, use:
493--map-syntax='.ignore:Git Ignore'
496Example: To open all `.conf` files in subfolders of `/etc/apache2` with the "Apache Conf"
497syntax, use (this mapping is already built in):
499--map-syntax='/etc/apache2/**/*.conf:Apache Conf'
502### Using a different pager
504`bat` uses the pager that is specified in the `PAGER` environment variable. If this variable is not
505set, `less` is used by default. If you want to use a different pager, you can either modify the
506`PAGER` variable or set the `BAT_PAGER` environment variable to override what is specified in
509If you want to pass command-line arguments to the pager, you can also set them via the
510`PAGER`/`BAT_PAGER` variables:
513export BAT_PAGER="less -RF"
516Instead 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).
518**Note**: By default, if the pager is set to `less` (and no command-line options are specified),
519`bat` will pass the following command line options to the pager: `-R`/`--RAW-CONTROL-CHARS`,
520`-F`/`--quit-if-one-screen` and `-X`/`--no-init`. The last option (`-X`) is only used for `less`
521versions older than 530.
523The `-R` option is needed to interpret ANSI colors correctly. The second option (`-F`) instructs
524less to exit immediately if the output size is smaller than the vertical size of the terminal.
525This is convenient for small files because you do not have to press `q` to quit the pager. The
526third option (`-X`) is needed to fix a bug with the `--quit-if-one-screen` feature in old versions
527of `less`. Unfortunately, it also breaks mouse-wheel support in `less`.
529If you want to enable mouse-wheel scrolling on older versions of `less`, you can pass just `-R` (as
530in the example above, this will disable the quit-if-one-screen feature). For less 530 or newer,
531it should work out of the box.
535`bat` expands tabs to 4 spaces by itself, not relying on the pager. To change this, simply add the
536`--tabs` argument with the number of spaces you want to be displayed.
538**Note**: Defining tab stops for the pager (via the `--pager` argument by `bat`, or via the `LESS`
539environment variable for `less`) won't be taken into account because the pager will already get
540expanded spaces instead of tabs. This behaviour is added to avoid indentation issues caused by the
541sidebar. Calling `bat` with `--tabs=0` will override it and let tabs be consumed by the pager.
545If you make use of the dark mode feature in macOS, you might want to configure `bat` to use a different
546theme based on the OS theme. The following snippet uses the `default` theme when in the _dark mode_
547and the `GitHub` theme when in the _light mode_.
550alias cat="bat --theme=\$(defaults read -globalDomain AppleInterfaceStyle &> /dev/null && echo default || echo GitHub)"
556`bat` can also be customized with a configuration file. The location of the file is dependent
557on your operating system. To get the default path for your system, call
562Alternatively, you can use the `BAT_CONFIG_PATH` environment variable to point `bat` to a
563non-default location of the configuration file:
565export BAT_CONFIG_PATH="/path/to/bat.conf"
568A default configuration file can be created with the `--generate-config-file` option.
570bat --generate-config-file
575The 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.
577Example configuration file:
579# Set the theme to "TwoDark"
582# Show line numbers, Git modifications and file header (but no grid)
583--style="numbers,changes,header"
585# Use italic text on the terminal (not supported on all terminals)
588# Use C++ syntax for .ino files
589--map-syntax "*.ino:C++"
592## Using `bat` on Windows
594`bat` mostly works out-of-the-box on Windows, but a few features may need extra configuration.
598You will need to install the [Visual C++ Redistributable](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads) package.
602Windows only includes a very limited pager in the form of `more`. You can download a Windows binary
603for `less` [from its homepage](http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/download.html) or [through
604Chocolatey](https://chocolatey.org/packages/Less). To use it, place the binary in a directory in
605your `PATH` or [define an environment variable](#using-a-different-pager). The [Chocolatey package](#on-windows) installs `less` automatically.
609Windows 10 natively supports colors in both `conhost.exe` (Command Prompt) and PowerShell since
610[v1511](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_version_history#Version_1511_(November_Update)), as
611well as in newer versions of bash. On earlier versions of Windows, you can use
612[Cmder](http://cmder.net/), which includes [ConEmu](https://conemu.github.io/).
614**Note:** The Git and MSYS versions of `less` do not correctly interpret colors on Windows. If you
615don’t have any other pagers installed, you can disable paging entirely by passing `--paging=never`
616or by setting `BAT_PAGER` to an empty string.
620`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)`
622This can be solved by creating a wrapper or adding the following function to your `.bash_profile` file:
628 for index in $(seq 0 ${#args[@]}) ; do
629 case "${args[index]}" in
631 *) [ -e "${args[index]}" ] && args[index]="$(cygpath --windows "${args[index]}")";;
634 command bat "${args[@]}"
640### Terminals & colors
642`bat` handles terminals *with* and *without* truecolor support. However, the colors in most syntax
643highlighting themes are not optimized for 8-bit colors. It is therefore strongly recommended
644that you use a terminal with 24-bit truecolor support (`terminator`, `konsole`, `iTerm2`, ...),
645or use one of the basic [8-bit themes](#8-bit-themes) designed for a restricted set of colors.
646See [this article](https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728) for more details and a full list of
647terminals with truecolor support.
649Make sure that your truecolor terminal sets the `COLORTERM` variable to either `truecolor` or
650`24bit`. Otherwise, `bat` will not be able to determine whether or not 24-bit escape sequences
651are supported (and fall back to 8-bit colors).
653### Line numbers and grid are hardly visible
655Please try a different theme (see `bat --list-themes` for a list). The `OneHalfDark` and
656`OneHalfLight` themes provide grid and line colors that are brighter.
660`bat` natively supports UTF-8 as well as UTF-16. For every other file encoding, you may need to
661convert to UTF-8 first because the encodings can typically not be auto-detected. You can `iconv`
663Example: if you have a PHP file in Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) encoding, you can call:
665iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 my-file.php | bat
667Note: you might have to use the `-l`/`--language` option if the syntax can not be auto-detected
673# Recursive clone to retrieve all submodules
674git clone --recursive https://github.com/sharkdp/bat
676# Build (debug version)
680# Run unit tests and integration tests
683# Install (release version)
684cargo install --path . --locked
686# Build a bat binary with modified syntaxes and themes
688cargo install --path . --locked --force
691If you want to build an application that uses `bat`s pretty-printing
692features as a library, check out the [the API documentation](https://docs.rs/bat/).
693Note that you have to use either `regex-onig` or `regex-fancy` as a feature
694when you depend on `bat` as a library.
698Take a look at the [`CONTRIBUTING.md`](CONTRIBUTING.md) guide.
702- [sharkdp](https://github.com/sharkdp)
703- [eth-p](https://github.com/eth-p)
704- [keith-hall](https://github.com/keith-hall)
705- [Enselic](https://github.com/Enselic)
707## Project goals and alternatives
709`bat` tries to achieve the following goals:
711- Provide beautiful, advanced syntax highlighting
712- Integrate with Git to show file modifications
713- Be a drop-in replacement for (POSIX) `cat`
714- Offer a user-friendly command-line interface
716There are a lot of alternatives, if you are looking for similar programs. See
717[this document](doc/alternatives.md) for a comparison.
720Copyright (c) 2018-2020 [bat-developers](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat).
722`bat` is made available under the terms of either the MIT License or the Apache License 2.0, at your option.
724See the [LICENSE-APACHE](LICENSE-APACHE) and [LICENSE-MIT](LICENSE-MIT) files for license details.
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