bat

bat is a cat clone with syntax highlighting and Git integration. It aims to make reading code and structured text in the terminal a premium, modern experience.

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1. Quick Comparison with cat

Feature	cat	bat
Syntax Highlighting	❌ No	✅ Yes (automatic by file extension/header)
Git Integration	❌ No	✅ Yes (displays git modifications in gutter)
Automatic Paging	❌ No (spills to stdout)	✅ Yes (pipes to less if output exceeds screen)
Show Non-Printable	✅ Yes (-v)	✅ Yes (-A / --show-all)
Line Numbers & Grid	❌ No (only line numbers via -n)	✅ Yes (fully customizable styles)

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2. Basic Usage & Common Aliases

Typically, users alias cat to bat for general usage, while keeping a "plain" fallback alias for copying or scripting.

# Basic usage
bat file.txt

# Common aliases in .bashrc / .zshrc
alias cat="bat --style=plain"     # Behave like cat but with color highlighting
alias batl="bat --style=full"     # Show full headers, grids, and line numbers

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3. Style & Display Customization

Control which visual elements are rendered around your file content.

Predefined Styles (--style)

You can pass a comma-separated list of components, or use one of the shorthand styles.

Style	Option Value	Components Shown
Full (Default)	full	Headers, grid, line numbers, git changes.
Plain	plain / -p	Text only, retains colors (equivalent to --style=none).
Grid	grid	Grid layout without headers or line numbers.
Numbers	numbers / -n	Line numbers only.
Changes	changes	Git changes gutter only.
Header	header	File header (name/size) only.

# Show file with only line numbers
bat --style=numbers main.js

# Custom style combining line numbers and git changes (no grid/header)
bat --style="numbers,changes" main.js

Specifying Line Ranges (-r / --line-range)

Only print specific lines of a file.

# Print lines 10 to 30
bat --line-range 10:30 file.md

# Print from line 50 to the end of the file
bat --line-range 50: file.md

# Print first 15 lines
bat --line-range :15 file.md

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4. Syntax & Themes

bat automatically detects syntax highlighting based on the file extension and content headers.

Languages & Mapping

• List Supported Languages: bat --list-languages
• Force Specific Syntax: Use -l or --language.
• Map File Patterns: Map custom file patterns to a specific language syntax.

# Force YAML syntax highlighting for a file without extension
bat -l yaml custom-config

# Map all *.hql files to SQL syntax highlighting
bat --map-syntax "*.hql:SQL" query.hql

Themes

• List All Themes: bat --list-themes
• Change Theme Temporarily: Use --theme=<theme-name>.

# Highlight using the popular Monokai Extended theme
bat --theme="Monokai Extended" script.py

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5. Configuration

Instead of writing long flags every time, you can configure your defaults in a configuration file.

Config File Location

• Linux/macOS: ~/.config/bat/config
• Windows: %APPDATA%\bat\config

TIP

Run bat --config-file to find the exact path of your configuration file on your current system.

Example Config File (~/.config/bat/config)

# Set theme
--theme="TwoDark"

# Set default style components
--style="numbers,changes,header"

# Always expand tabs to 4 spaces
--tabs=4

# Never wrap text
--wrap=never

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6. Git Integration

bat communicates with Git to show local modifications in the gutter next to line numbers:

• + (Green): Line was added.
• ~ (Yellow): Line was modified.
• - (Red): Line was deleted (displays a small indicator showing where deletion happened).

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7. Advanced CLI Integrations

1. Interactive File Viewer (fzf)

Combine bat with fzf for an interactive file search with instant preview:

fzf --preview 'bat --style=numbers --color=always --line-range :500 {}'

2. Replacing the default man pager

Use bat to view terminal manuals with color and syntax highlighting:

# Place this in your .bashrc / .zshrc
export MANPAGER="sh -c 'col -bx | bat -l man -p'"

3. Tailing Logs with Syntax Highlighting

Pipe streaming output or logs directly into bat (note that you must disable paging):

tail -f production.log | bat --paging=never -l log

4. Interactive Git Diffing

Use bat as a diff highlight viewer:

git diff | bat -l diff