A visual cat-like file viewer with syntax highlighting supporting 2-file views.

With melt, you can view the content of two files that are placed side by side. The two files are syntax highlighted separately.

Dark background

Light background

The syntax highlighting is done with the excellent bat tool (https://github.com/sharkdp/bat), so first you need to install bat.

Then, create a virtual environment and start using the software:

$ pipenv install --dev
$ ./start.py
melt - visual cat-like file viewer with syntax highlighting supporting 2-file views

Usage: melt FILE1 FILE2 [options]

Options:

-h, --help                show this help
--light                   theme for light background

melt requires bat (https://github.com/sharkdp/bat) for the syntax highlighting

The program was tested under Linux only. If you want to have a standalone executable, then issue the command

$ pynt exe

which will create the executable file melt in the dist/ folder. (Note: for this to work, follow the installation steps.)

There is a similar program called meld, which is a GUI merge and diff tool. I wanted something similar in the terminal. The name melt indicates that it is similar to meld but it is made for the terminal.

I wanted a tool that can show two files side by side in the terminal using syntax highlighting. melt is not made for merging and showing diffs, it is just a file viewer with two panels. A great advantage of melt is that the two files can have different extensions and thus they will be colored differently.

• Reddit discussion (link)