env var BAT_OPTS

[VladimirAlexiev]

BAT_THEME allows you to set a theme.
I also want to set --wrap never permanently, but there's no respective env var.

Why not do like "less", where the LESS env var can take any of the command-line options?
I'd suggest to use the name BAT_OPTS for this, since in the mind of Windows users BAT means "batch files".

(Note: I've added this setting to your bat() function as per #263)

[eth-p]

@VladimirAlexiev I agree, something like this would be useful. Some options such as --color and --wrap don't currently have environment variables, and future options would need their own respective variables as well.

That being said, however, I think that it might be getting a bit excessive on environment variables. We already have:

• BAT_STYLE
• BAT_THEME
• BAT_TABS
• BAT_PAGER

Maybe there's a better way to support this kind of functionality? I'm thinking there should be some sort of configuration file (toml, maybe?) that covers all of these different options, and any future options that could be added. @sharkdp What do you think?

[sharkdp]

I agree that the number of environment variables is getting out of hand and I'd rather replace it with one of the suggested options (BAT_OPTS or configuration file).

The BAT_OPTS variable is kind of appealing to me since it is really easy to implement (I believe, if clap supports this somehow 😄) and very straightforward to use. There is no need for additional documentation of a config format and N other environment variables - everything is just configured by command-line options, but they may also be placed in BAT_OPTS.

A dedicated configuration file would have the advantage that some things might be easier to configure (for the user) and potentially easier to parse/deserialize (for the developer). I'm thinking about features such as #169 where it might be more convenient to have a dictionary-type structure in a configuration file as opposed to a command line flag which has to be specified multiple times (--map-extension myini ini --max-extension my-ruby-file rb).

Note that there is a hybrid variant which ripgrep uses where command line flags are stored in the configuration file.

[llimllib]

(To add some detail to @VladimirAlexiev's comment, in case you got here looking for how to tell bat to never wrap like I did, here is one way to do so. Add this alias to your ~/.bashrc until there is some mechanism to tell bat not to page:

# Add the `--wrap never` arg to all `bat` invocations
bat() {
    command bat --wrap never "${args[@]}"
}

)

[sharkdp]

@llimllib Not sure what kind of syntax this is, but that doesn't seem to work for me in bash or zsh. Simply setting an alias should be enough:

alias bat="bat --wrap never"

[sharkdp]

Support for a ripgrep-style configuration file: #338

[llimllib]

@sharkdp that function works for me in bash, maybe you need to update? anyway the simple alias is obviously simpler and better 👍

[sharkdp]

Both BAT_OPTS as well as a configuration file have been added in #338.

[sharkdp]

Released in v0.8.0.