From ba5cbe208ff7d9397950be42e9f11f2051d57966 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Stick Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2020 11:25:45 -0500 Subject: [PATCH] explain how to use bat as cat (no paging) --- README.md | 12 ++++++------ 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index f04e6a1c..8a51a8e8 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -38,14 +38,14 @@ characters: ### Automatic paging -`bat` can pipe its own output to a pager (e.g `less`) if the output is too large for one screen. +By default, `bat` pipes its own output to a pager (e.g `less`) if the output is too large for one screen. +If you would rather `bat` work like `cat` all the time (never page output), you can set `--paging=never` as an option, either on the command line or in your configuration file. +If you intend to alias `cat` to `bat` in your shell configuration, you can use `alias cat='bat --paging=never'` to preserve the default behavior. -### File concatenation +#### File concatenation -Oh.. you can also use it to concatenate files :wink:. Whenever -`bat` detects a non-interactive terminal (i.e. when you pipe into another process -or into a file), `bat` will act as a drop-in replacement for `cat` and -fall back to printing the plain file contents. +Even with a pager set, you can still use `bat` to concatenate files :wink:. +Whenever `bat` detects a non-interactive terminal (i.e. when you pipe into another process or into a file), `bat` will act as a drop-in replacement for `cat` and fall back to printing the plain file contents, regardless of the `--pager` option's value. ## How to use