Bat v0.26.0

hoistbypetard wrote: post #2

When I saw this, I was hoping that [The Bat!]( https://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/ ) had been released as FOSS. This is still pretty cool.

Same, I thought they may have gone through a rebrand or something..

I wonder how long ago it was I last used it - must’ve been sometime around 2010 or a few years earlier..

Re: Bat v0.26.0

#7

Post by rado » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 7:35 AM UTC

hoistbypetard wrote: post #2

When I saw this, I was hoping that [The Bat!]( https://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/ ) had been released as FOSS. This is still pretty cool.

Came here to say exactly that. Loved it back in the day, great app.

Re: Bat v0.26.0

#8

Post by atoav » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 8:07 AM UTC

jansan wrote: post #3

What is it? It says it is a cat clone, but what is cat?

A very wide used command line program that prints out the contents of a file on a terminal. Chances are pretty high cat is installed on your system already.

Example: If you're navigating to the folder of a git repository in your terminal and quickly want to see what the readme says without having to open a file manager or going to the website on github/gitlab/codeberg you can run:

  cat README.md

Which shows the text stored in that file directly in your terminal window.

bat does essentially the same, only fancier, with syntax highlighting, some formatting and colors.

Re: Bat v0.26.0

#9

Post by aquir » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 8:15 AM UTC

hoistbypetard wrote: post #2

When I saw this, I was hoping that [The Bat!]( https://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/ ) had been released as FOSS. This is still pretty cool.

Same here...but this is cool stuff as well!

Re: Bat v0.26.0

#10

Post by emil-lp » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 8:16 AM UTC

jansan wrote: post #3

What is it? It says it is a cat clone, but what is cat?

Bat is a file viewer that supports syntax highlighting and reads git status to also annotate added/deleted/changed lines.

The classic file viewer for a terminal is cat (or less).