Unnecessary left padding with `bat --style=plain,changes examples/simple.rs`

[radek-sprta]

First of all, thank you for this excellent software.

By default, bat uses 2 character wide left padding when displaying content. It would be great to have option to turn this off. And optionally make it part of the --plain option.

[Enselic]

I can't recall ever seeing 2 character wide padding anywhere. Can you please elaborate on what you mean, and what output you expect? I see see this with bat 0.20.0:

% bat examples/simple.rs                    
───────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
       │ File: examples/simple.rs
       │ Size: 177 B
───────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
   1   │ /// A simple program that prints its own source code using the bat library
   2   │ use bat::PrettyPrinter;
   3   │ 
   4   │ fn main() {
   5   │     PrettyPrinter::new().input_file(file!()).print().unwrap();
   6   │ }
───────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
% bat --plain examples/simple.rs
/// A simple program that prints its own source code using the bat library
use bat::PrettyPrinter;

fn main() {
    PrettyPrinter::new().input_file(file!()).print().unwrap();
}

[jzuhone]

@Enselic if you want to have a mostly plain style but want to turn on something like (say) github changes, then you will get a two-space padding before text:

Just plain:

% bat --plain examples/simple.rs
/// A simple program that prints its own source code using the bat library
use bat::PrettyPrinter;

fn main() {
    PrettyPrinter::new().input_file(file!()).print().unwrap();
}

plain with changes:

% bat --plain,changes examples/simple.rs
  /// A simple program that prints its own source code using the bat library
  use bat::PrettyPrinter;

  fn main() {
      PrettyPrinter::new().input_file(file!()).print().unwrap();
  }

It would be nice to at least have the option to remove the padding.

[Enselic]

Thank you for explaining, indeed seems like this can be improved.

[Fleshgrinder]

Sometimes it would be nice to actually be able to apply some padding. Consider the case where the output is used in line with some text, and that text is already indented to some level.

[sharkdp]

It would be nice to at least have the option to remove the padding.

but how would you imagine that the output should look like? What if we need to prepend with +/-/~? Do you want the indentation to by out of sync in those lines?

[jzuhone]

@sharkdp that is a good question. I guess there's the tension between wanting to have changes set all of the time (I had it in an alias to ls) vs setting it manually whenever know for sure you want to see github changes.

[cohml]

Could this tension be resolved by, for example, include the current padding if and only if there are any changes to be marked? That seems like a principled middle-of-the-road solution.

I pass changes by default, but I agree it gets in the way when viewing files that aren't tracked by git.

[sveba]

I support this request very much. If no changes, there shouldn't be indentation.