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 s