bat
A cat clone for the terminal with syntax highlighting and Git integration.
HN commenters recommend it as a cat replacement with colored syntax highlighting123 and an automatic pager.4 No complaints were raised; it suits terminal users building a toolkit of dependable command-line tools.56
Why people recommend it
Syntax highlighting · 2
Commenters like it as a cat replacement with colored, syntax-highlighted output.
“nice coloured cat replacement”
“another thing I use a lot is bat, which is cat with syntax highlighting and an automatic pager.”
Automatic pager · 1
It pages long output automatically.
“another thing I use a lot is bat, which is cat with syntax highlighting and an automatic pager.”
Boring reliability · 1
One commenter lists it among their 'completely boring technology' daily tools.
“Completely boring technology: aurutils, bash (with bash-it), bat, cp, git, grep, head, man, mv, pacman, rm, rsync, ssh, sudo, tmux, tree, vim.”
Caveats and dissent
No one in these comments warned against it.
Often compared with
Who recommends it in their own words
Threads where it came up
- Help Keep Thunderbird Alive 1 mention
- Ask HN: Which CLI tools do you use daily? 1 mention
- Ask HN: What dev tools do you rely on that nobody talks about? 1 mention
- Emacs and Vim in the Age of AI 1 mention
- Ask HN: Have you ever cloned a cat? 1 mention
- Microsoft Has Killed Widgets Six Times. Here's Why They Keep Coming Back 1 mention
Also written as The Bat!, The Bat. Data: bat.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 6
“when i used windows i was happy with The Bat email client”
“Completely boring technology: aurutils, bash (with bash-it), bat, cp, git, grep, head, man, mv, pacman, rm, rsync, ssh, sudo, tmux, tree, vim.”
“nice coloured cat replacement”
“another thing I use a lot is bat, which is cat with syntax highlighting and an automatic pager.”
“Give this a shot https://github.com/sharkdp/bat”
I think it’s interesting to reconsider the idea of having floating widgets in an era of powerful CPUs/GPUs and multi-monitor setups. Personally, I love having my “widgets” active on the third monitor (the one I dedicate to “frivolous stuff” when I’m not drowning in open windows). I always keep two “old-school” draggable widgets active: a "macro keyboard shortcut remider" and a “diabetes monitoring dashboard” (unfortu