How can I display syntax highlighting on a file?

Question

Is there a variant of cat that outputs syntax-highlighted lines of code when used on a source file?

An idea: maybe vi[m] or another editor can be asked to dump the syntax-highlighted contents of said files to stdout and exit immediately?

score 51 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 26 '11 at 02:42

51

Passing the file through pygmentize-f terminal will attempt to detect the type from the filename and highlight it appropriately.

answered Aug 26 '11 at 02:42

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

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Is that the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine font in their logo? If it is that's awesome. – amphetamachine Aug 26 '11 at 03:57
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Available as package `python-pygments` on Debian. – enzotib Aug 26 '11 at 07:57
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I found `alias pcat="pygmentize -f terminal256 -O style=native -g"` to be a nice solution – Mikael Öhman Dec 26 '12 at 07:51
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also available via `pip install pygments` – craigb Nov 08 '13 at 20:59
@MikaelÖhman I actually found it easier to alias `cat` to a function `pcat` that took the filename as an argument, and output that to `less`: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1821495/how-do-i-include-parameters-in-a-bash-alias – yurisich Jun 03 '14 at 18:53
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Actually it must be `cat code.extension | pygmentize -f terminal -l extension`. – fiatjaf Apr 16 '15 at 21:34
@MikaelÖhman Thanks, the `-O style=native` made it more readable on dark terminals – flonk May 28 '21 at 09:35

score 15 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 25 '11 at 18:01

The Source-highlight package is shipped with the esc.outlang output language definition, which highlights with ANSI escape sequences.

A handy wrapper src-hilite-lesspipe.sh is also included in the package, so displaying highlighted output in the terminal is just src-hilite-lesspipe.sh source.file.

Actually src-hilite-lesspipe.sh's primary reason is to help automating the use of source-highlight with less. You just set:

export LESSOPEN="| /path/to/src-hilite-lesspipe.sh %s"
export LESS=' -R '

Then any less source.file will show highlighted source code. (Code in unknown language will pass through unaltered. Highlighting will be also skipped in case of redirected content, like less < source.file.)

Nice, thank you for taking the time to write up this answer – Paolo Nov 05 '11 at 07:39 — Paolo, Nov 05 '11 at 07:39

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 28 '15 at 01:04

7

Highlight is simple to use and faster than pygmentize

answered Oct 28 '15 at 01:04

davidhq

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Just don't forget to use `-O ansi`: unlike `pygmentize`, `highlight` outputs HTML by default. – Ruslan Sep 20 '17 at 15:26

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered May 06 '15 at 15:31

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I use vimcat.

https://github.com/ofavre/vimcat

vimcat example

It looks good enough for me.

answered May 06 '15 at 15:31

isomorphismes

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I like this idea to use my existing Vim highlighting, just wish the utility worked on all *nix and was available for MacOS via Homebrew! – Cameron Flint Mar 29 '20 at 00:40

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 22 '21 at 03:20

Based on @Mikael Öhman's comment on @Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams's answer, I wrote this Python program to use pygments if possible or else use cat.

#! /usr/bin/env python3

from argparse import ArgumentParser
import subprocess
import os
import os.path


def main():
    parser = ArgumentParser(description='cat alternative that uses ANSI characters')
    parser.add_argument('file', help='the file to print out the contents of', type=str)
    args = parser.parse_args()
    if not os.path.isfile(args.file):
        parser.error(f'file not found: {args.file}')
    cat = False
    result = subprocess.run(('pygmentize -f terminal256 -O style=native ' + args.file).split(), stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
        stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
    )
    if result.stderr:
        cat = True
    commands = {
        True: 'cat ',
        False: 'pygmentize -f terminal256 -O style=native '
    }
    os.system(commands[cat] + args.file)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

How can I display syntax highlighting on a file?

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