Can `cat` show files using code markup in colors?

Sometimes I quickly want to view the contents of a file from the command line. For this I of course use cat, but it is often source files in Python, Java or simple HTML. For these files it would be handy if cat could give some color markup to the files, so that it reads more easy.

Can cat do such a thing?

cat is not able to do this. However, maybe pygments may be able to help you there. It is a python script and can be either installed via apt-get

sudo apt-get install python-pygments

or easily downloaded and installed via easy_install.

It supports lots of source code languages and also markup languages

It is used by

pygmentize -g <filename>

Not from cat itself but you can use something like source highlite or supercat or highlight

Source-highlight

This program, given a source file, produces a document with syntax highlighting. It also provides a C++ highlight library (new) (since version 3.0).

Source-highlight reads source language specifications dynamically, thus it can be easily extended (without recompiling the sources) for handling new languages. It also reads output format specifications dynamically, and thus it can be easily extended (without recompiling the sources) for handling new output formats. The syntax for these specifications is quite easy (take a look at the manual).

The manual about installation:

See the file INSTALL for detailed building and installation instructions; anyway if you're used to compiling Linux software that comes with sources you may simply follow the usual procedure, i.e., untar the file you downloaded in a directory and then:

 cd <source code main directory>
 ./configure
 make
 make install

Supercat

This is Supercat's homepage. Supercat is a program that colorizes text based on matching regular expressions/strings/characters. Supercat supports html output as well as standard ASCII text. Unlike some text-colorizing programs that exist, Supercat does not require you to have to be a programmer to make colorization rules.

If you have written a supercat config file for a standard file type please do not hesitate to contact me at "bug-spc (at) nosredna (dot) net" for possible inclusion in the supercat distribution.

• Here is an example page of Supercat's work on Gentoo's emerge.log

• Installation/source file (tar.gz)

• Example configuration file

Or with a function (source):

#!/bin/bash#!/bin/bash
if [ ! -t 0 ];then
        file=/dev/stdin
elif [ -f $1 ];then
        file=$1
else
        echo "Usage: $0 code.c"
        echo "or e.g. head code.c|$0"
        exit 1
fi
pygmentize -f terminal -g $file

Requires: Pygments (sudo apt-get install python-pygments python3-pygments) Add it as a function to bash .functions and give it a name like color()