[kwlug-disc] `cat` alternatives? i.e. `batcat` looks promising

[Ron]

Anyone using `batcat` or `lolcat` as `cat` alternatives?


It's a bit of a niche use case, but they're interesting examples of some
stodgy ol' utilities being re-imagined for the 2020s.


The first I encountered, `lolcat`, has *beautiful* output, even if the
name chaps my butt.  Rainbow colours vertically and horizontally.

It's dumb, but it sure is pretty. It rarely gets used.



There's another one though that actually looks useful and might just
replace cat & less: `batcat` (Ubuntu) or `bat` elsewhere: a `cat` clone 
"with wings".

Anyone use this and have any tips?  Curious what other think of it and 
of the "oxidization¹" of common tools (¹oxidation = enhancing & 
rewriting in Rust).


Looks like 2025 is the year of modernizing some of my tools and this 
might get aliased to `less` and / or `cat`.


https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/blob/master/README.md

> bat: A cat Clone Written in Rust for Linux and Unix
> 
> Syntax highlighting – Bat supports syntax highlighting for a large
> number of programming and markup languages.
> 
> Git integration – Bat communicates with git to show modifications in
> left side.
> 
> Automatic paging – The command can pipe its own output to less if
> the output is too large for one screen.
> 
> Display and highlight non-printable characters.
> 
> A user-friendly command-line interface.
> 
> And of course, for file concatenation, including all of the cat
> command functionality.