see

Display file contents with optional formatting, slicing, and emphasis

Overview

see is a modern file viewer that extends the functionality of traditional tools like cat with powerful features for slicing, highlighting, and formatting text output.

Full Name: see
Version: 0.1.1
Equivalent: cat
Repository: github.com/pynosaur/see

Features

• Line Slicing - Display specific line ranges
• Character Slicing - Display specific character ranges
• Pattern Emphasis - Highlight specific patterns with colors
• Line Numbers - Display files with line numbers
• stdin Support - Read from standard input

Installation

# Via pget
pget install see

# From source
git clone https://github.com/pynosaur/see.git
cd see
bazel build //:see_bin
cp bazel-bin/see ~/.local/bin/

Usage

Basic Usage

# Display a file
see file.txt

# Show help
see --help

# Show version
see --version

Line Slicing

# Lines 0-10
see -l 0:10 file.txt

# First 5 lines
see -l :5 file.txt

# From line 5 to end
see -l 5: file.txt

# Last 5 lines
see -l -5: file.txt

# Every 2nd line from 0-20
see -l 0:20:2 file.txt

# Reverse file
see -l ::-1 file.txt

Specific Line Indices

# Single line
see -l 5 file.txt

# Multiple specific lines
see -l 0,2,4 file.txt
see -l 10,20,30 file.txt

Character Slicing

# First 100 characters
see -c 0:100 file.txt

# Characters 50-150
see -c 50:150 file.txt

Pattern Emphasis (Highlighting)

# Highlight "error"
see -e "error" file.txt

# Multiple patterns
see -e "TODO" -e "FIXME" file.txt

# Custom color and bold
see --color=yellow --bold -e "warning" file.txt

# Case-insensitive
see -i -e "warning" file.txt

Line Emphasis

# Emphasize specific lines
see -E 1,3,5 file.txt

# Emphasize line range
see -E 0:10 --color=green file.txt

Line Numbers

# Show line numbers
see -n file.txt

Combined Features

# Lines 0-20 with numbers, highlighting errors in red
see -n -l 0:20 -e "error" --color=red file.txt

stdin Support

echo "Hello, World!" | see
cat file.txt | see -e "important"
ls -la | see -e ".py"

Options

• -h, --help - Show help message
• -v, --version - Show version information
• -l, --lines SLICE - Display lines: start:stop[:step] or N,N,N
• -c, --chars SLICE - Display characters: start:stop[:step]
• -e, --emphasize PATTERN - Highlight pattern
• -E, --emphasize-lines LINES - Emphasize entire lines
• --color COLOR - Emphasis color (red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan)
• --bold - Use bold text for emphasis
• -i, --ignore-case - Case-insensitive pattern matching
• -n, --number - Show line numbers

Examples

Preview last 20 lines of a log file:

see -l -20: large_file.log

Highlight errors and warnings in logs:

see -e "error" -e "warning" --color=red --bold log.txt

Find TODO items in source code:

see -e "TODO" -e "FIXME" --color=yellow src/main.py

Show specific lines with numbers:

see -n -l 0:10 README.md

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