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I probably have a bunch of such tools installed on my main machine. The problem is you actually need to remember to use them, and then maybe their command line switches to get the desired output. Whereas cat/less/git/vim are muscle memory. Not to mention that you first need to get over the hum of installing them in your system, likely needing to grab the latest Go/Rust/Zig toolchain along the way.

So while I admire the engineering effort, I still find utility of these tools limited.



I’m in the same boat with a lot of these tools, but bat is different in that it’s compatible enough to be safe to alias to the command it's replacing[1]. You can continue to use cat as usual, with the benefit of getting syntax-highlighted output.

[1]: Assuming you use the `--paging=never` flag in your alias as the README suggests.


brew usually manages to install these tools for me with no problems. And on the memory point, there's always `alias` or adding a symlink in ~/.local/bin. But, yeah, I have the exact same problem remembering to use `eza`. For some reason, I don't find `bat` as much of a problem; ls is probably more ingrained.


Just alias them in your shell config. You don't have to remember to use them if you have more and less just be aliases to bat. Same thing I do with eza, the ls replacement -- "ls" calls eza.


I use fish’s abbreviations instead of aliases. That way I get control and visibility into the change, but can also gradually learn it too :)




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