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How to get syntax highlighting for cat using pygments

📅 2013-Dec-30 ⬩ ✍️ Ashwin Nanjappa ⬩ 🏷️ cat, pygments, syntax highlighting ⬩ 📚 Archive

Some people like to quickly have a look at short source files using cat at the terminal. It would be nice to have syntax highlighting for such a use. Though cat does not support syntax highlighting, it is easy to get a similar experience using Pygments, a syntax highlighter written in Python.

First, install Pygments using pip:

[code lang=bash] $ sudo pip install Pygments


This installs a `pygmentize` program, whose `-g` can be used to request it to guess the type of input file and apply the appropriate syntax highlighting:

[code lang=bash]
$ pygmentize -g foobar.cpp

If you use this regularly, create an alias for it with a name that is easy to remember like ccat.

Tried with: Pygments 1.6, Python 2.7.3 and Ubuntu 12.04


© 2022 Ashwin Nanjappa • All writing under CC BY-SA license • 🐘 @codeyarns@hachyderm.io📧