Man1 - bat.1

bat - a cat(1) clone with syntax highlighting and Git integration.

bat [OPTIONS] [FILE]…

“bat

bat prints the syntax-highlighted content of a collection of FILEs to the terminal. If no FILE is specified, or when FILE is ’-’, it reads from standard input.

bat supports a large number of programming and markup languages. It also communicates with git(1) to show modifications with respect to the git index. bat automatically pipes its output through a pager (by default: less).

Whenever the output of bat goes to a non-interactive terminal, i.e. when the output is piped into another process or into a file, bat will act as a drop-in replacement for cat(1) and fall back to printing the plain file contents.

General remarks: Command-line options like ’-l’/’–language’ that take values can be specified as either ’–language value’, ’–language=value’, ’-l value’ or ’-lvalue’.

-A, –show-all

Show non-printable characters like space, tab or newline. Use ’–tabs’ to control the width of the tab-placeholders.

-p, –plain

Only show plain style, no decorations. This is an alias for ’–style=plain’. When ’-p’ is used twice (’-pp’), it also disables automatic paging (alias for ’–style=plain *–pager*=/never/’).

-l, –language <language>

Explicitly set the language for syntax highlighting. The language can be specified as a name (like ’C++’ or ’LaTeX’) or possible file extension (like ’cpp’, ’hpp’ or ’md’). Use ’–list-languages’ to show all supported language names and file extensions.

-H, –highlight-line <N:M>…

Highlight the specified line ranges with a different background color. For example:

–highlight-line 40

highlights line 40

–highlight-line 30:40

highlights lines 30 to 40

–highlight-line :40

highlights lines 1 to 40

–highlight-line 40:

highlights lines 40 to the end of the file

–file-name <name>…

Specify the name to display for a file. Useful when piping data to bat from STDIN when bat does not otherwise know the filename. Note that the provided file name is also used for syntax detection.

-d, –diff

Only show lines that have been added/removed/modified with respect to the Git index. Use ’–diff-context=N’ to control how much context you want to see.

–diff-context <N>…

Include N lines of context around added/removed/modified lines when using ’–diff’.

–tabs <T>

Set the tab width to T spaces. Use a width of 0 to pass tabs through directly

–wrap <mode>

Specify the text-wrapping mode (auto, never, character). The ’–terminal-width’ option can be used in addition to control the output width.

–terminal-width <width>

Explicitly set the width of the terminal instead of determining it automatically. If prefixed with ’+’ or ’-’, the value will be treated as an offset to the actual terminal width. See also: ’–wrap’.

-n, –number

Only show line numbers, no other decorations. This is an alias for ’–style=numbers’

–color <when>

Specify when to use colored output. The automatic mode only enables colors if an interactive terminal is detected. Possible values: auto, never, always.

–italic-text <when>

Specify when to use ANSI sequences for italic text in the output. Possible values: always, never.

–decorations <when>

Specify when to use the decorations that have been specified via ’–style’. The automatic mode only enables decorations if an interactive terminal is detected. Possible values: auto, never, always.

-f, –force-colorization

Alias for ’–decorations=always –color=always’. This is useful if the output of bat is piped to another program, but you want to keep the colorization/decorations.

–paging <when>

Specify when to use the pager. To disable the pager, use ’–paging=never’ or its alias, -P. To disable the pager permanently, set BAT_PAGER to an empty string. To control which pager is used, see the ’–pager’ option. Possible values: auto, never, always.

–pager <command>

Determine which pager is used. This option will override the PAGER and BAT_PAGER environment variables. The default pager is ’less’. To control when the pager is used, see the ’–paging’ option. Example: ’–pager “less -RF”’.

-m, –map-syntax <glob-pattern:syntax-name>…

Map a glob pattern to an existing syntax name. The glob pattern is matched on the full path and the filename. For example, to highlight .build files with the Python syntax, use -m ’.build:Python’. To highlight files named ’.myignore’ with the Git Ignore syntax, use -m ’.myignore:Git Ignore’. Note that the right-hand side is the name of the syntax, not a file extension.

–theme <theme>

Set the theme for syntax highlighting. Use ’–list-themes’ to see all available themes. To set a default theme, add the ’–theme=“…”’ option to the configuration file or export the BAT_THEME environment variable (e.g.: export BAT_THEME=“…”).

–list-themes

Display a list of supported themes for syntax highlighting.

–style <style-components>

Configure which elements (line numbers, file headers, grid borders, Git modifications, ..) to display in addition to the file contents. The argument is a comma-separated list of components to display (e.g. ’numbers,changes,grid’) or a pre-defined style (’full’). To set a default style, add the ’–style=“..”’ option to the configuration file or export the BAT_STYLE environment variable (e.g.: export BAT_STYLE=“..”). Possible values: auto, full, plain, changes, header, grid, rule, numbers, snip.

-r, –line-range <N:M>…

Only print the specified range of lines for each file. For example:

–line-range 30:40

prints lines 30 to 40

–line-range :40

prints lines 1 to 40

–line-range 40:

prints lines 40 to the end of the file

-L, –list-languages

Display a list of supported languages for syntax highlighting.

-u, –unbuffered

This option exists for POSIX-compliance reasons (’u’ is for ’unbuffered’). The output is always unbuffered - this option is simply ignored.

-h, –help

Print this help message.

-V, –version

Show version information.

<FILE>…

Files to print and concatenate. Use a dash (’-’) or no argument at all to read from standard input.

cache - Modify the syntax-definition and theme cache.

bat can also be customized with a configuration file. The location of the file is dependent on your operating system. To get the default path for your system, call:

bat –config-file

Alternatively, you can use the BAT_CONFIG_PATH environment variable to point bat to a non-default location of the configuration file.

To generate a default configuration file, call:

bat –generate-config-file

bat supports Sublime Text .sublime-syntax language files, and can be customized to add additional languages to your local installation. To do this, add the .sublime-syntax language files to `*$(bat –config-dir)/syntaxes*` and run `*bat cache –build*`.

Example:

mkdir -p “\((bat --config-dir)/syntaxes"\\ cd "\)(bat –config-dir)/syntaxes”

git clone https://github.com/tellnobody1/sublime-purescript-syntax

bat cache –build

Once the cache is built, the new language will be visible in `*bat –list-languages*`.
If you ever want to remove the custom languages, you can clear the cache with `*bat cache –clear*`.

Similarly to custom languages, bat supports Sublime Text .tmTheme themes. These can be installed to `*$(bat –config-dir)/themes*`, and are added to the cache with `*bat cache –build`.*

For more information and up-to-date documentation, visit the bat repo:
https://github.com/sharkdp/bat