DEV Community

Cover image for Stop using cat
Nick Taylor
Nick Taylor Subscriber

Posted on • Originally published at nickyt.co

Stop using cat

#terminal #shell

If you use cat in your daily workflow, this is a tiny upgrade with lots of upsides and honestly, no downsides aside from you need to install it as it’s not native.

What is bat?

bat is a cat alternative with syntax highlighting and line numbering to name a few features while being a drop in replacement to workflows you have that use regular cat.

Install 

# macOS
brew install bat

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt install bat

# via installation script
curl -s https://sh.rustup.rs | bat
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Just FYI, once it’s installed, on some Linux distros, the binary is named batcat.

Six practical ways to use bat

By default you get all the bat goodness when you don’t specify any flags. Syntax highlighting, line numbering etc. Here’s some common use cases.

Read config files quickly 

bat ./astro.config.mjs
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

With cat:

cat outputting an Astro configuration file

With bat:

bat outputting an Astro configuration file

You get visual structure without opening an editor.

Show line numbers while debugging 

bat -n src/server.ts
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Line numbers make it much easier to point teammates to exact spots in a file.

Use plain mode for logs or scripts 

bat -p logs/app.log
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

-p strips the decorations when you want cleaner output.

Focus on a line range 

bat --line-range 40:120 src/index.ts
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Great when you only need one section of a file.

Quickly review changed files 

git diff --name-only | xargs bat
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Useful for a quick scan of touched files before a commit or review.

Navigate large files with a pager 

bat large-file.log
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

bat automatically pipes output through a pager like less when the file is longer than your terminal window. No need to manually pipe to less like you would with cat.

Should you alias cat to bat?

I alias it, because YOLO, but if you do run into issues, just alias it to something other than cat, or not at all.

alias c='bat'
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

TL;DR

bat is one of the easiest terminal upgrades you can make. If you read code, logs, or config files in the terminal every day, switching from cat to bat is a no brainer.

If you want to stay in touch, all my socials are on nickyt.online

Until the next one!

Top comments (4)

Collapse
 
giovannimazzuoccolo profile image
Giovanni Mazzuoccolo •

Nice finding! I saw it is built in Rust.

I immediately thought that works well with man, so we can have batman. And of course, it already exists: github.com/eth-p/bat-extras/blob/m...

Collapse
 
nickytonline profile image
Nick Taylor •

A crab dancing

Collapse
 
harsh2644 profile image
Harsh •

Great tip, Nick! I never thought about switching
from cat to bat the syntax highlighting alone
makes it worth it for code reviews.

Do you use any other terminal tools that have
replaced your defaults? Would love to know! 🙂

Collapse
 
nickytonline profile image
Nick Taylor •

Hey Harsh! Thanks for reading and glad you like the tip! Yes I have replaced others. You can see a bunch of other ones I recommend in my terminal tag for my newsletter onetipaweek.com.