lat

lat | lazy cat - a cat clone with some quality-of-life embellishments

About

lat is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. It's the awkward middle child in-between cat and bat. It was created because the author didn't want to have to configure bat just to get decent file printing, but wanted a little more control than cat offered.

lat does not expect to be used. lat expects to be forgotten and shunted into a corner because it does not belong in the slightest.

lat is fast. Here are the hyperfine results comparing cat, lat, and bat on a ~24MB text file:

❯ hyperfine "cat log.log" "lat log.log" "bat log.log" -N --warmup 200
  Benchmark 1: cat log.log
    Time (mean ± σ):       3.6 ms ±   0.3 ms    [User: 0.4 ms, System: 2.3 ms]
    Range (min … max):     3.1 ms …   5.0 ms    851 runs

  Benchmark 2: lat log.log
    Time (mean ± σ):       6.2 ms ±   0.7 ms    [User: 0.4 ms, System: 4.2 ms]
    Range (min … max):     5.5 ms …  14.5 ms    496 runs

    Warning: Statistical outliers were detected. Consider re-running this benchmark on a quiet system without any interferences from other programs. It might help to use the '--warmup' or '--prepare' options.

  Benchmark 3: bat log.log
    Time (mean ± σ):     103.9 ms ±   0.5 ms    [User: 37.5 ms, System: 65.6 ms]
    Range (min … max):   103.2 ms … 104.8 ms    28 runs

  Summary
    'cat log.log' ran
    1.74 ± 0.26 times faster than 'lat log.log'
    29.10 ± 2.85 times faster than 'bat log.log'

tested on a 2020 M1 MacBook Pro 16GB

as you can see, the extra features do take their toll on performance, but overall, lat is generally nearly on-par with cat, and far faster than bat.

Use

lat can, for the most part, be a direct drop in for cat, however it really shines when embedded into another program. For example, in fzf lat makes an excellent viewer with the command fzf --command lat -l {}.

Soon, I plan to add the ability to live-write to lat. That means that lat can become yet another output stream.

For example, this should be possible in a future version of lat

int main(void) {
  FILE *st = popen("lat -l", "w");
  if (st == NULL)
  	exit(1);

  fprintf(st, "look ma, i'm formatted!")

  pclose(st);
}

Features and Flags

--color

Completely disables or enables all colored output from lat.

Example

lat also respects NO_COLOR, but --color overrides it

--lines

Print numbers for each line of the file.

Example

--headers

Shows or hides formatted file data headers.

Example

--binary

By default, lat will attempt to detect if the file is printable or not. If the file isn't (e.g. you ran lat file.pdf) then lat will enter binary mode. In binary mode, lat will skip a lot of processing in favor of speed. You can force binary mode to be on or off with the flags -b and -bb respectively.

Example

--literal

lat is smart enough to print all non-file characters to a separate filestream. That way, the output of lat can be used to concatenate files, the way it was originally meant to be. However, sometimes you want those extra symbols. --literal prints everything out to the primary filestream (usually stdout)

Example

--pager

lat comes with out-of-the-box support for paging in less. If you don't want your file messing up your terminal, just -p it.

Example

If there is a feature you'd like to see, feel free to make an issue (1x points). If you're feeling especially savvy, make a PR with the feature (10x points).

Helptext

lat --help

lat | lazy cat - a cat clone with some quality-of-life embellishments

usage: lat [-cntblpVh] [file...]

options:
  -c, --color     toggle color
  -n, --lines     toggle line numbers
  -t, --headers     toggle file info headers
  -b, --binary     toggle binary mode, -b forces binary and -bb forces NOT binary
  -l, --literal     print everything to stdout (or equivalent)
  -p, --pager     print file with the pager (uses less)
  -V, --version     show program version
  -h, --help     display this help text (--help shows additional info)

environment:
  NO_COLOR, see https://no-color.org/

examples:
lat file1
  print the contents of file1 with the default formatting
lat - file1
  read from stdin (the '-' flag reads from stdin) and then print the contents of stdin and file1
lat -nc file1 file2
  print the contents of file1 and file2 without printing line numbers or colors
lat --binary file.txt
  force file.txt to be treated as a binary file
lat -bb --pager file.txt
  force file.txt to NOT be treated as a binary file and print it in the pager
curl example.com | lat
  pipe the results of 'curl example.com' into lat
fzf --preview 'lat -l {}'
  use lat as the file viewer in fzf