[bat error] No such file or directory (os error 2) in fzf preview when used with ripgrep

[thomastthai]

What steps will reproduce the bug?

❯ cd ~/Documents/
❯ mkdir bat-error
❯ cd bat-error/
❯ touch a.txt b.txt c.txt
❯ echo "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." >> a.txt
❯ echo "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." >> b.txt
❯ echo "The five boxing wizards jump quickly at dawn" >> c.txt
❯ rg --glob '*.txt' "brown fox" | fzf --preview-window=top,wrap --preview 'bat --color=always "{}"'

What happens?

fzf's preview window shows:

[bat error]: ''b.txt:The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.'': No such file or directory (os error 2)

...

What did you expect to happen instead?

For the preview window to show the filename and the matched line in the fzf preview window without the error.
...

How did you install bat?

homebrew

---

bat version and environment

]❯ bat --diagnostic

Software version

bat 0.24.0

Operating system

macOS 15.0.1 (Darwin 24.0.0)

Command-line

bat --diagnostic

Environment variables

SHELL=/opt/homebrew/bin/bash
PAGER=<not set>
LESS=<not set>
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_ALL=<not set>
BAT_PAGER=<not set>
BAT_PAGING=<not set>
BAT_CACHE_PATH=<not set>
BAT_CONFIG_PATH=<not set>
BAT_OPTS=<not set>
BAT_STYLE=<not set>
BAT_TABS=<not set>
BAT_THEME=<not set>
XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/Users/thomas/.config
XDG_CACHE_HOME=/Users/thomas/.cache
COLORTERM=truecolor
NO_COLOR=<not set>
MANPAGER=<not set>

System Config file

Config file

# Set the theme to "TwoDark"
--theme="TwoDark"

# Show line numbers, Git modifications and file header (but no grid)
--style="numbers,changes,header"

# Use italic text on the terminal (not supported on all terminals)
--italic-text=always

# Use C++ syntax for Arduino .ino files
--map-syntax "*.ino:C++"

Custom assets metadata

bat_version: 0.24.0
creation_time:
  secs_since_epoch: 1729291942
  nanos_since_epoch: 656985000

Custom assets

• metadata.yaml, 97 bytes
• syntaxes.bin, 915557 bytes
• themes.bin, 40606 bytes

Compile time information

• Profile: release
• Target triple: aarch64-apple-darwin
• Family: unix
• OS: macos
• Architecture: aarch64
• Pointer width: 64
• Endian: little
• CPU features: aes,crc,dit,dotprod,dpb,dpb2,fcma,fhm,flagm,fp16,frintts,jsconv,lor,lse,neon,paca,pacg,pan,pmuv3,ras,rcpc,rcpc2,rdm,sb,sha2,sha3,ssbs,vh
• Host: aarch64-apple-darwin

Less version

> less --version
less 581.2 (POSIX regular expressions)
Copyright (C) 1984-2021  Mark Nudelman

less comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
For information about the terms of redistribution,
see the file named README in the less distribution.
Home page: https://greenwoodsoftware.com/less

Could this error be similar to #2628?

[LangLangBart]

By setting the --delimiter flag to :, and using the first field index expression {1}, the file name will be correctly passed to bat. Quoting the placeholder is not needed, fzf does it for you.

rg --glob '*.txt' "brown fox" |
  fzf --delimiter ":" --preview-window=top,wrap --preview 'bat --color=always {1}'

PS: fzf has extensive documentation¹ on an interactive rg function with bat used to preview the file.

Footnotes

1. fzf/ADVANCED.md at master · junegunn/fzf · GitHub ↩