cate

A lightweight CLI tool to display file contents with encoding support and syntax highlighting - like cat but better.

Features

• 🎨 Syntax Highlighting: Automatic syntax highlighting for 219 languages
• 🌍 Multi-encoding Support: UTF-8, GBK, Big5, Shift-JIS, and more
• 🔍 Smart Detection: Auto-detects file type and encoding
• 🎭 Multiple Themes: 7 built-in color themes
• 📝 Line Numbers: Optional line number display
• 🚀 Lightweight & Fast: Only 2.1 MB binary size with streaming architecture
• ⚡ High Performance: Instant output for large files with line-by-line processing
• 🔧 Debug Mode: Detailed encoding detection information
• 📋 Stdin Support: Read from pipes and redirects with language specification
• 🎯 Manual Language Selection: Override auto-detection with -l/--language flag

Installation

Quick Install (Recommended)

Linux/macOS

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/superyngo/cate/main/install.sh | bash

Windows (PowerShell)

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/superyngo/cate/main/install.ps1 | iex

The installation script will:

• Automatically detect your platform and architecture
• Download the latest release from GitHub
• Install the binary to the appropriate location
• Add it to your PATH automatically

Manual Installation

From Binary Releases

Download the appropriate binary for your platform from the releases page.

Linux/macOS

# Extract the tarball
tar xzf cate-*.tar.gz

# Move to PATH (optional)
sudo mv cate /usr/local/bin/

# Make executable (if needed)
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/cate

Windows

Simply download cate-windows-x86_64.exe and rename it to cate.exe. Add it to your PATH for easy access.

From Source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/superyngo/cate.git
cd cate

# Build with cargo
cargo build --release

# Binary will be in target/release/cate (or cate.exe on Windows)

Uninstallation

If you installed using the installation scripts, you can uninstall with:

Linux/macOS

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/superyngo/cate/main/install.sh | bash -s uninstall

Windows (PowerShell)

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/superyngo/cate/main/install.ps1 | iex -Uninstall

For manual installations, simply remove the binary from your system.

Usage

# Display file with syntax highlighting (default)
cate file.rs

# Display multiple files
cate file1.rs file2.py file3.js

# Show line numbers with highlighting
cate file.rs -n

# Specify encoding
cate file.txt -e gbk

# Use different theme
cate file.py --theme "Solarized (dark)"

# Disable syntax highlighting
cate file.txt --no-highlight

# Read from stdin with language specification
cat script.sh | cate -l bash
echo 'fn main() { println!("Hello"); }' | cate -l rust

# Override file extension detection
cate -l python file.txt

# List available themes
cate --list-themes

# List supported languages
cate --list-syntaxes

# List supported encodings
cate --list-encodings

# Debug mode (show encoding detection info)
cate file.txt --debug

Options

-h, --help              Show help message
-v, --version           Show version information
-e, --encoding <ENC>    Specify encoding (utf-8, gbk, big5, shift-jis, etc.)
-n, --number            Show line numbers
--debug                 Enable debug mode
--list-encodings        List all supported encodings

Syntax Highlighting:
--no-highlight          Disable syntax highlighting
--theme <THEME>         Set color theme (default: base16-eighties.dark)
-l, --language <LANG>   Specify syntax language (e.g., rust, python, js)
--list-themes           List all available themes
--list-syntaxes         List all supported languages

Encoding Detection

The tool uses the following priority for encoding detection:

1. UTF-8/BOM: If file has BOM or is valid UTF-8
2. User Specified: Encoding specified with -e flag
3. System Encoding: Falls back to system default encoding

Supported Encodings

Unicode

• UTF-8, UTF-16LE, UTF-16BE

Chinese

• GBK (Simplified Chinese)
• Big5 (Traditional Chinese)

Japanese

• Shift-JIS

Western European

• Windows-1252, ISO-8859-1

Others

Any encoding supported by the encoding_rs crate (e.g., EUC-JP, ISO-8859-2, KOI8-R, etc.)

Supported Languages

Syntax highlighting is supported for 219 languages including:

Programming Languages

• Rust, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript
• Go, C, C++, Java, C#

Scripting

• Bash, PowerShell, Batch File
• Makefile, Dockerfile

Data & Markup

• JSON, YAML, TOML, XML
• HTML, CSS, Markdown

Themes

• base16-eighties.dark (default)
• Solarized (dark/light)
• InspiredGitHub
• base16-ocean.dark
• base16-mocha.dark
• And more...

Examples

Syntax Highlighting

# Display Rust file with syntax highlighting
cate src/main.rs

# Use a different theme
cate app.py --theme "Solarized (dark)"

# Show line numbers with highlighting
cate config.toml -n

# Display multiple source files
cate src/*.rs

Encoding Support

# Display GBK-encoded file
cate chinese_file.txt -e gbk

# Show Big5 file with line numbers
cate traditional_chinese.txt -e big5 -n

# Combine encoding and highlighting
cate source_code.py -e gbk -n

Advanced Usage

# Debug encoding detection
cate mystery_file.txt --debug

# Use with pipes and specify language
cat unknown_script | cate -l python
echo 'fn main() { println!("Test"); }' | cate -l rust

# Language specification (case-insensitive, supports extensions)
cat script | cate -l Rust    # Works with any case
cat script | cate -l rs      # Works with file extension
cat script | cate -l js      # JavaScript by extension

# Override file extension detection
cate config.txt -l yaml      # Treat .txt as YAML

# Convert encoding and display with highlighting
iconv -f gbk -t utf-8 input.py | cate -l python

# Disable highlighting for plain text
cate log.txt --no-highlight

Building

Development Build

cargo build

Release Build (Optimized)

cargo build --release

The release build is heavily optimized for size using:

• LTO (Link-Time Optimization)
• Size optimization (opt-level = "z")
• Symbol stripping
• Single codegen unit

Testing

# Run all tests
cargo test

# Run with output
cargo test -- --nocapture

Performance

cate uses a streaming architecture inspired by bat for optimal performance:

• ⚡ Line-by-line processing: Files are processed and output incrementally
• 🚀 Instant output: First lines appear immediately, even for large files
• 💾 Low memory usage: Only buffers single lines, not entire files
• 🎯 Stateful highlighting: Correctly handles multi-line syntax (comments, strings, etc.)
• 🛡️ Long line protection: Automatically skips highlighting for lines >16KB

Performance Example

# 10,000 line file processes in ~0.3 seconds with instant first-line output
cate large_file.rs

# Use --no-highlight to disable syntax highlighting for faster plain text output
cate large_file.txt --no-highlight

Why cate?

The name "cate" combines "cat" (the Unix command) with "encoding", making it easy to remember and type.

Advantages over regular cat:

• ✅ Syntax highlighting for 219 programming languages
• ✅ 7 beautiful themes with true color support
• ✅ Streaming architecture for instant output on large files
• ✅ Automatic encoding detection and conversion
• ✅ Support for non-UTF-8 files (GBK, Big5, Shift-JIS, etc.)
• ✅ Manual language selection with -l flag
• ✅ Debug mode for troubleshooting encoding issues
• ✅ Built-in line numbering
• ✅ Only 2.1 MB binary size

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details

Third-Party Resources

This project uses syntax definitions from the bat project, which are licensed under MIT License / Apache License 2.0. The syntax definitions are originally derived from Sublime Text packages (MIT License).

For complete third-party license information, see THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.md.

Acknowledgements

• bat project - For the excellent syntax definition collection
• Sublime Text community - For maintaining the original syntax definitions
• syntect - For the syntax highlighting engine

Author

wen

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit issues or pull requests.