`cat` syntax highlighting

It seems that this pygmentize -g doesn't works for regular files and doesn't silently fail. I use a ccat alias instead, any idea for smarter way?

edit I miss the quote around the alias definition in my ~/.profie file /edit

A similar solution would be to use vim for syntax highlighting: http://hype-free.blogspot.ro/2011/09/using-less-with-syntax-highlight.html

cat output is a stream which can then be piped. I don't think vim can do that.

Excellent!

it works!

@opatry,

I did not experiment that, I'm running it with zsh & macosx.

What happens if you use echo "Some normal text" > test && pygmentize -g test?

@cdman, I already tried that but it was much slower for me.

@borisguery I'm using zsh too but on GNU/Linux.

Running directly pygmentize -g test works fine but when using an alias defined in my ~/.profile, I get this error:

alias ccat=pygmentize -g

$ ccat test
Error: no lexer for filename 'test' found

Direct pygmentize usage works like a charm:

$ pygmentize -g test
Some normal text

Very strange behavior…

Ok, got it, I missed the quotes on the alias definition… works fine now, nice tip!

(my last comment didn't get published…)
Finally, the answer is very simple, I missed the quotes around the command alias definition --'

Works fine now, thanks for the tip.

Btw, could i get html output with pygment?

Very nice tip!

I agree on using ccat instead of cat since pygmentize doesn't work for normal files :)

I agree on using ccat instead of cat since pygmentize doesn't work for normal files :)

I agree on using ccat instead of cat since pygmentize doesn't work for normal files :)

Thanks. I'd been using code-less (using the Vim trick). Now I have code-cat for quick dumps.

That's right

Great tip. I wrapped this up in another script where I use pygmentize if the file is recognizable by Pygments, and lolcat (https://github.com/busyloop/lolcat) if the file is not (I called this "cat.sh" and in my bashrc I alias cat to cat.sh):

#!/bin/sh
# if no file specified default to lolcat reading on stdin
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
    lolcat
else
    TYPE=$(pygmentize -N $1)

    if [ $TYPE = "text" ]; then
        lolcat $1
    else
        pygmentize $1
    fi
fi

It's also in Github: https://github.com/pzelnip/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/cat.sh

Great tip!