Print files with syntax highlighting

Two commands print files with colour: cmdop highlight, which is always a highlighter, and cmdop cat, which is a drop-in replacement for cat.

cmdop highlight

cmdop highlight main.py
cmdop highlight -n config.yaml
cmdop highlight -l python script
cmdop highlight -t dracula main.go
cmdop highlight *.go

cmdop cat

cmdop cat prints files like cat(1) and adds highlighting only when the output is a terminal. It is a genuine drop-in in two ways:

• Piped or redirected output is the raw bytes — no colour, no decoration — so cmdop cat main.go | grep func behaves exactly like cat.
• Any real cat(1) flag it cannot render itself (-b, -e, -n, -s, -t, -u, -v, -A, and the GNU long forms) is handed to the system cat unchanged, so you get your platform’s authentic behavior and its authentic error messages.

cmdop cat main.go                     # highlighted in a terminal
cmdop cat a.py b.py                   # multiple files, each with a header
cmdop cat --number config.yaml        # line numbers on the highlighted output
cmdop cat -n config.yaml              # POSIX -n -> the system cat
cmdop cat --language json data
cmdop cat --color=always f | less -R  # force colour through a pipe

With no file arguments, or with -, it reads standard input.

To make it your cat:

cmdop cat --install-alias --apply