BATPIPE(1)

🦋 batpipe(1) — General Commands Manual 🦋

okay so welcome to the batpipe(1) glow-up, bestie 💖 this is the manual page that explains the whole vibe: batpipe is a less (and bat) preprocessor situation, and it's genuinely iconic for peeking at way more file types in your terminal. iykyk 💅

✨ NAME ✨

• batpipe — A less (and bat) preprocessor for viewing more types of files in the terminal. periodt 💖

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

no extra description text here in the original — the deets are all in the sections below, and they ate ✨

💅 USAGE 💅

Like lesspipe, batpipe is designed to work with programs that support preprocessing with the LESSOPEN environment variable. Setting up batpipe will depend on your shell:

Bash:

eval "$(batpipe)"

Fish:

eval (batpipe)

🎀 ENVIRONMENT 🎀

one variable, one job, periodt:

• BATPIPE_TERM_WIDTH — Sets the terminal width provided to bat. If this variable starts with a hyphen (-), the number provided will be relative to the detected terminal size.

🧚 BUILT-IN VIEWERS 🧚

these are the file types batpipe already handles by default, no cap:

• Directories → eza, ls
• .tar, .tar.gz → tar
• .zip, .jar → unzip
• .gz → gunzip
• .xz → xz

🦋 EXTERNAL VIEWERS 🦋

For file formats that aren't supported by default, an external file viewer can be added to batpipe through the external viewer API.

External viewers get added to batpipe by creating bash scripts inside the ~/.config/batpipe/viewers.d/ directory.

🎀 Creating Viewers 🎀

Viewers must define two functions and append the viewer's name to the $BATPIPE_VIEWERS array.

• viewer_${viewer}_supports [file_basename] [file_path] [inner_file_path]
• viewer_${viewer}_process [file_path] [inner_file_path]

The viewer_${viewer}_supports function is called to determine if the external viewer is capable of viewing the provided file. If this function returns successfully, the corresponding process function will be called.

🔮 API 🔮

• $BATPIPE_VIEWERS — An array of loaded file viewers.
• $BATPIPE_ENABLE_COLOR — Whether color is supported. (true|false)
• $BATPIPE_INSIDE_LESS — Whether batpipe is inside less. (true|false)
• batpipe_header [pattern] [...] — Print a viewer header line.
• batpipe_subheader [pattern] [...] — Print a viewer subheader line.
• strip_trailing_slashes [path] — Strips trailing slashes from a path.

💀 CAVEATS 💀

caveat time, bestie — don't skip this one 🙈

• By default, batpipe will not use colors when previewed inside less. Colors must be explicitly enabled with BATPIPE=color.

---

xoxo, BATPIPE(1) 💅 — General Commands Manual (the footer is literally just BATPIPE(1), bestie — no date or version to spill, and I'm not making one up) 🫶