◆ fat

fat — a fast, syntax-aware alternative to cat, written in Rust.

Built in the spirit of bat: files get an informative header, a quiet gutter, line numbers and terminal-aware colors. It remains intentionally small and local: no service, account, telemetry or configuration file is required.

── src/main.rs ─────────────────────────────────────────────────
  1 │ use std::io;
  2 │
  3 │ fn main() {
  4 │     println!("hello from fat");
  5 │ }

Install

Requires Rust 1.85+.

cargo install ofat
fat src/main.rs

From the checkout:

cargo run --release -- --style=full src/main.rs

Usage

fat src/main.rs
fat --style=full Cargo.toml README.md
fat -n -r 20:60 src/main.rs
curl -s https://example.com/snippet.rs | fat -l rust -
fat --file-name settings.toml - < config
fat -pp README.md > README.txt

Option	Description
-n, --number	Number-only view, without headers or grid
-p, --plain	Exact plain text without decorations or color
-l, --language	Set syntax when the filename is unknown
-r, --line-range N:M	Show an inclusive range of lines
--style	default, full, header, numbers or plain
--paging / -P	Control the built-in less -R pager behavior
--file-name	Name stdin data for the header and syntax detection
-A, --show-all	Show spaces, tabs and line endings
-s, --squeeze-blank	Collapse consecutive blank lines

The default pager activates only on interactive output that is longer than the terminal. Color automatically stays out of pipes, NO_COLOR is respected, and --color=always is available for integrations.

Philosophy

fat takes the useful surface of bat without trying to recreate every layer: read files quickly, inspect a range, name data arriving through stdin and keep the Unix pipeline clean.

Development

cargo fmt --check
cargo test
cargo build --release

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE.