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#

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# macOS
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brew install bat
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# Ubuntu / Debian
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sudo apt install bat
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# via installation script
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curl -s https://sh.rustup.rs | bat

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#

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bat ./astro.config.mjs

With cat:

With bat:

You get visual structure without opening an editor.

Show line numbers while debugging#

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bat -n src/server.ts

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

Use plain mode for logs or scripts#

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bat -p logs/app.log

-p strips the decorations when you want cleaner output.

Focus on a line range#

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bat --line-range 40:120 src/index.ts

Great when you only need one section of a file.

Quickly review changed files#

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git diff --name-only | xargs bat

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

Navigate large files with a pager#

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bat large-file.log

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.

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alias c='bat'

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.

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Until the next one!