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...
The `less` command can toggle line numbers (`-N`, either as a command line argument, or while running it interactively) and toggle line wrapping (`-S`, again either way). It can also receive streamed output with `+F`, making it a viable alternative to `tail -f`. (I'm not sure if what you meant by static output is that it all has to be available before the command can read it.)
It can't adjust the columns in a table, but then I don't believe that `bat` can either, and I'm not aware of any similar program that can. (If there is one, please let me know.)
In the case of `bat` (or `man` or other programs that use a pager) it often requires no extra typing either, since `bat` will pipe it's output to `less` by default (or whatever you specify with the `PAGER` environment variable).
The `less` command can be quite a bit more powerful than it initially looks. I'd recommend looking over the man page sometime -- you might be surprised. In fact, looking over the `minus` page, other than being able to be compiled into another program so it doesn't have to be shipped separately on Windows, I'm not sure what it can do that `less` cannot. (If I'm missing some killer feature, please let me know. I'm not trying to bash `minus`, I just don't know what more it offers.)
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...