dircat

A fast command-line tool that concatenates source files from a directory into a single Markdown document with syntax highlighting. Perfect for sharing codebases with LLMs, creating documentation, or archiving project snapshots.

Features

• Glob pattern matching - Include files using flexible glob patterns (e.g., *.rs, **/*.js)
• Smart exclusions - Automatically skips common build directories (target/, node_modules/, etc.)
• Syntax highlighting - Automatically detects language from file extensions for proper Markdown code blocks
• Hidden file filtering - Skips dot-directories (.git, .vscode, etc.) by default
• Sorted output - Files are sorted alphabetically by path for consistent output

Installation

From source

git clone https://github.com/shishketti/dircat.git
cd dircat
cargo build --release

The binary will be available at target/release/dircat.

Using Cargo

cargo install --path .

Usage

dircat <directory> <patterns> [--exclude <pattern>...] [--output <file>]

Arguments

Argument	Description
<directory>	The root directory to scan
<patterns>	Comma-separated glob patterns for files to include
--exclude <pattern>	Additional glob pattern to exclude (can be used multiple times)
--output, -o	Output file path (default: output.md)

Examples

Concatenate all Rust files in the current directory:

dircat . "*.rs"

Concatenate all JavaScript and TypeScript files:

dircat ./src "*.js,*.ts,*.jsx,*.tsx" -o frontend-code.md

Include all Python files but exclude tests:

dircat ./myproject "*.py" --exclude "*_test.py" --exclude "test_*.py"

Export an entire web project:

dircat ./webapp "*.html,*.css,*.js" --exclude "*.min.js" -o webapp-source.md

Default Exclusions

The following directories and patterns are excluded by default:

• target/ - Rust build directory
• node_modules/ - Node.js dependencies
• __pycache__/ - Python bytecode cache
• .git/ - Git repository data
• dist/ - Distribution builds
• build/ - Build outputs
• vendor/ - Vendored dependencies
• *.lock - Lock files

All hidden directories (starting with .) are also skipped.

Supported Languages

dircat automatically applies syntax highlighting hints for these file extensions:

Languages	Extensions
Python	.py
JavaScript	.js
TypeScript	.ts
JSX/TSX	.jsx, .tsx
Rust	.rs
Go	.go
Java	.java
C/C++	.c, .cpp
C#	.cs
Ruby	.rb
PHP	.php
Kotlin	.kt
Swift	.swift
Scala	.scala
Shell	.sh, .bash, .zsh, .fish
PowerShell	.ps1
SQL	.sql
HTML/CSS	.html, .htm, .css, .scss, .sass, .less
Markup	.md, .markdown, .rst, .tex
Config	.json, .yaml, .yml, .toml, .ini, .cfg, .conf, .xml

Output Format

The generated Markdown file contains each matched file as a section:

### path/to/file.rs

​```rust
// file contents here
​```

---

### path/to/another/file.rs

​```rust
// more contents
​```

Use Cases

• LLM Context - Quickly package your codebase to share with AI assistants
• Code Reviews - Create a single document for offline review
• Documentation - Generate code appendices for technical docs
• Archiving - Snapshot source code in a readable format

Acknowledgments

This project is a Rust rewrite of folkhack's original Python script.

License

MIT