litcat

litcat is a simple Rust CLI tool for viewing patch and diff files with highlighting. It colors added (+), removed (-), and context lines to make git diffs easier to read in your terminal.

Features

• Colors added lines in green
• Colors removed lines in red
• Colors diff headers and hunk markers
• Reads from a file or standard input (pipe)

Usage

From a patch file

litcat xxx.patch

Accepting stdin

cat diff.patch | litcat

Example Output

• Lines starting with + (but not +++) are green
• Lines starting with - (but not ---) are red
• Diff headers (+++, ---) are cyan
• Hunk markers (@@ ... @@) are yellow
• All other lines are default color

Installation

1. Build from Source

1. Clone the repo:

   git clone https://github.com/shan-shaji/litcat.git
   cd litcat

2. Build:

   cargo build --release

3. Copy the build to ~/.cargo/bin.
4. Run as shown above.

2. Install from crates.io

you can install directly using cargo:

cargo install litcat

Dependencies

• clap for CLI argument parsing
• colored for colored terminal output