BAT

PRIMARY CATEGORY → SETUP

Batcat → A cat(1) clone with Wings 🦇

This cat clone offers features such as →

• Syntax Highlighting

It supports it for a large number of Programming and Markup Languages

To list all supported →

bat --list-language

• Git Integration

Reference

It displays the modifications compared to the last Commit

• Non-Printable Characters Display

Reference

• Pagination

More info here

Installation

Reference

First of all, access to the Releases page and copy the Download Link of the bat_X.X.X_amd64.deb

Then, install it as follows →

wget -O bat.deb "DOWNLOAD_LINK_BAT_AMD64.DEB"

sudo dpkg --install bat.deb

That’s it!

$ command -V bat && bat --version
bat is /usr/bin/bat
bat 0.24.0 (fc95468)

CAT → BAT

To replace cat with bat, simply add the following aliases in the .zshrc file →

alias cat='bat' # Standard sustitution
alias catn='bat --style=plain' # Only shows Plain Text (No decorations)
alias catnp='bat --style=plain --paging=never' # Plain Text and No Pagination

That’s it!

$ command -V cat
cat is an alias for bat 

Integration

Reference

BAT supports integrations with other Tools or Functionalities such as →

Find ~ FD

$ sudo find /path/to/dir ... -exec bat {} +

$ fd . /path/to/dir ... --exec-batch bat {}

Command’s Help

• Paginate →

$ nmap --help | bat --plain --language help # Or bat -pl help

• Non-Paginate →

$ nmap --help | bat --plain --language help --paging=never # Or bat -ppl help

Man

$ export MANPAGER="sh -c 'col -bx | bat -l man -p'"
$ man nmap

To make the above action permanent, add the following line in the .zshrc file →

export MANPAGER="sh -c 'col -bx | bat -l man -p'"

Tail -{F,f}

Specially useful for continuos monitoring a file with Syntax Highlighting

$ tail -F /path/to/file.log | bat --paging=never --language log