Having to pipe to a pager - to follow the unix philosophy - means:
- extra typing each time
- the pager receives static output. There is no interactivity... Sure, most pagers can search. But there is no way to have a table with adjustable columns, or toggle word wrap or line numbers etc.
I feel that for a tool like bat, it is better to have it built-in and not follow the composable philosophy because it is just so much more convenient.
Of course the minus integration in bat is fairly basic at the moment, I guess supporting different code paths for static pagers vs interactive would increase maintenance burden quite a lot...
I feel that for a tool like bat, it is better to have it built-in and not follow the composable philosophy because it is just so much more convenient. Of course the minus integration in bat is fairly basic at the moment, I guess supporting different code paths for static pagers vs interactive would increase maintenance burden quite a lot...