Stop using cat

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

Just FYI, on some Linux distros, the binary is named batcat.

5 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

With cat:

With bat:

You get visual structure without opening an editor.

Show line numbers while debugging

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

bat -p logs/app.log

-p strips the decorations when you want cleaner output.

Focus on a line range

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

Great when you only need one section of a file.

Quickly review changed files

git diff --name-only | xargs bat

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

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'

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!