batcat (or bat) displays ANSI color codes instead of rendering the colors #3257

og900aero · 2025-04-03T14:44:57Z

og900aero
Apr 3, 2025

When I batcat this log file, I dont see colorized text. Only the color codes.
How can I solve this problem?

╰─❯ batcat -pp test.log

PLAY [Runs a local script on a remote node after transferring it] **************

TASK [Gathering Facts] *********************************************************
0;32mok: [AB8]

TASK [Runs a local script on a remote node after transferring it] **************
0;33mchanged: [AB8]

PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
0;33mAB8                        : 0;32mok=2    0;33mchanged=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

Answered by minanagehsalalma

May 5, 2026

What you are feeding into bat already contains ANSI escape sequences, so bat is trying to syntax-highlight text that is not plain text anymore. The README calls this out explicitly: ANSI/control sequences can make highlighting and wrapping look garbled.

The first thing I would try is stripping the ANSI sequences before highlighting:

batcat --strip-ansi=auto -pp test.log

If your bat version supports it and you want to be more aggressive:

batcat --strip-ansi=always -pp test.log

If the goal is to preserve the original terminal coloring rather than re-highlight it, then bat is probably the wrong stage for that file. In that case, either:

view it with a pager that renders raw ANSI correctly, or

View full answer

keith-hall · 2025-04-03T19:07:26Z

keith-hall
Apr 3, 2025
Collaborator

Hi, it's hard to say without more details. Please can you post the log file in question and the output from batcat --diagnostics please?
Also you may find one of the batcat --strip-ansi options could help if your version of bat is new enough

1 reply

og900aero Apr 4, 2025
Author

Hi, it's hard to say without more details. Please can you post the log file in question and the output from batcat --diagnostics please? Also you may find one of the batcat --strip-ansi options could help if your version of bat is new enough

I uploded the content of test.log: https://0x0.st/825j.txt
This contain log from ansible's command.
When I use batcat -pp I get color codes instead of colored text. When I use cat, I get colored text.
I use batcat 0.22.1 (Debian 12 stable -> bat has been built without the 'bugreport' feature. The '--diagnostic' option is not available.
I downloaded 0.25 version, and when I use --strip-ansi=auto, the nworking normally.

hermanmalik · 2025-08-20T00:07:20Z

hermanmalik
Aug 20, 2025

I made a test file to figure out what is going on. It appears the issue is that bat doesn't support semicolons in the ANSI sequences. Try for yourself with the following (make sure the unprintable character in the beginning of each line actually is the character '\e' or '\033'):

�[0;31m REGULAR RED
�[31m REGULAR RED (this works!)
�[1;31m BOLD RED
�[4;31m UNDERLINE RED
�[41m BACKGROUND RED (this works!)
�[0m BLACK/RESET

�[0;91m HIGH INTENSITY RED
�[91m HIGH INTENSITY RED (this works!)
�[1;91m BOLD HIGH INTENSITY RED
�[4;101m BACKGROUND HIGH INTENSITY RED
�[0m BLACK/RESET

I played around with the --pager and --paging flags to make sure that it was using less with the -R flag, but it didn't help. Note that less, by itself, with the -R flag, renders all of these correctly.
I'm also on Debian, though Debian 13 instead of Debian 12, so I'm using 0.25.0.
I'm going to go look at the code now but I don't know if it'll be in my power to figure out a patch.

1 reply

hermanmalik Aug 20, 2025

Okay, I was mistaken. It's actually the file extension that's the problem. I went through all the extensions listed in bat -L and classified them:

=================== FINAL RESULTS ===================
Working extensions (118): 
adoc ad asciidoc authorized_keys pub authorized_keys2 bib cabal cfml cfm cfc cmake diff patch dockerfile eml msg mbx mboxz fstab crypttab mtab git gitlog mailmap graphql graphqls gql groff troff hosts html htm shtml xhtml asp yaws rails rhtml erb adp twig http properties jsp j2 jinja2 jinja jsonnet tex ltx lhs make makefile man md mdown markdown markdn mkd mediawiki wikipedia wiki meminfo build conf ninja mll org passwd php php3 php4 php5 php7 phps phpt phtml txt proto protobuf protodevel pp epp rd rst rest robot resource haml slim skim sls sol ssh_config sshd_config svlt svelte sty cls textile toml tml varlink vimhelp vue xml xsd xslt tld dtml rng rss opml svg xaml yaml yml 

Broken extensions (276): 
as adb ads gpr envvars htaccess applescript s S asa yasm nasm asm inc mac awk bat cmd sh bash zsh ash c cs csx cpp cc cp cxx c++ h hh hpp hxx h++ inl ipp clj cljc cljs edn coffee cson csv tsv cr css d di dart env ex exs elm erl hrl escript fs fsi fsx fish f F f77 F77 for FOR fpp FPP f90 F90 f95 F95 f03 F03 f08 F08 namelist attributes gitattributes gitconfig gitignore vs gs vsh fsh gsh vshader fshader gshader vert frag geom tesc tese comp glsl mesh task rgen rint rahit rchit rmiss rcall gp gpl gnuplot gnu plot plt go dot gv groovy gvy gradle hs ini INI inf INF reg REG lng cfg CFG desktop url URL java bsh htc js mjs jsx babel es6 cjs pac jq json jsonl jsonc jsonld geojson sarif libsonnet libjsonnet jl kt kts lean less lisp cl clisp l mud el scm ss lsp fasl sld ls ll log lua nse matlab nim nims nimble nix nsi nsh bnsi bnsh nsdinc m mm ml mli mly pas p dpr pl pc pm pmc pod t ps1 psm1 psd1 purs py py3 pyw pyi pyx pxd pxi rpy cpy gyp gypi vpy wscript bazel bzl xsh xonshrc qml qmlproject R r rkt rego re rb capfile cgi fcgi gemspec irbrc jbuilder podspec prawn rabl rake rbx rjs thor rxml builder rs ron sass scala sbt sc scss sml cm sig sql ddl dml erbsql strace styl stylus swift syslog sv svh vh tcl tf tfvars hcl ts mts cts tsx v V vim vimrc gvimrc vy wgsl zig

I checked these with batcat --color=always --style=numbers "$file". The broken ones varied in their degree of brokenness; I'd say about half of them rendered the ANSI codes which did not have semicolons and half of them didn't render any ANSI color codes. The color codes are also rendered correctly without any extension.

minanagehsalalma · 2026-05-05T13:30:58Z

minanagehsalalma
May 5, 2026

What you are feeding into bat already contains ANSI escape sequences, so bat is trying to syntax-highlight text that is not plain text anymore. The README calls this out explicitly: ANSI/control sequences can make highlighting and wrapping look garbled.

The first thing I would try is stripping the ANSI sequences before highlighting:

batcat --strip-ansi=auto -pp test.log

If your bat version supports it and you want to be more aggressive:

batcat --strip-ansi=always -pp test.log

If the goal is to preserve the original terminal coloring rather than re-highlight it, then bat is probably the wrong stage for that file. In that case, either:

view it with a pager that renders raw ANSI correctly, or
strip ANSI first and let bat re-highlight the cleaned text

So the short version is: this is not a normal bat syntax case; it is an ANSI-in-the-input case, and --strip-ansi is the right direction.

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batcat (or bat) displays ANSI color codes instead of rendering the colors #3257

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og900aero Apr 3, 2025

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keith-hall Apr 3, 2025 Collaborator

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hermanmalik Aug 20, 2025

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minanagehsalalma May 5, 2026

og900aero
Apr 3, 2025

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keith-hall
Apr 3, 2025
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og900aero Apr 4, 2025
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hermanmalik
Aug 20, 2025

minanagehsalalma
May 5, 2026