Output Formats¶

Dumpcat supports three output formats: Markdown (default), Plain text, and JSON.

Markdown¶

The default format. Great for pasting into LLM chat interfaces that render Markdown.

dumpcat -f markdown

# File Contents

## `src/main.py`

```python
import sys

def main():
    print("hello")
```

# File Tree

```
.
├── src/
│   └── main.py
└── README.md
```

File contents are wrapped in fenced code blocks with language detection based on file extension.

Supported languages¶

Dumpcat auto-detects syntax highlighting for: Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Rust, Go, Ruby, Java, Kotlin, C/C++, C#, Swift, Bash, HTML, CSS, SCSS, JSON, YAML, TOML, SQL, Markdown, Lua, R, PHP, Perl, Elixir, Erlang, Haskell, OCaml, HCL, Protobuf, GraphQL, Vue, Svelte, and more.

Plain text¶

A clean, no-frills format.

dumpcat -f plain

=== src/main.py ===

import sys

def main():
    print("hello")

=== TREE ===

.
├── src/
│   └── main.py
└── README.md

JSON¶

Structured output for programmatic consumption.

dumpcat -f json

{
  "files": {
    "src/main.py": {
      "content": "import sys\n\ndef main():\n    print(\"hello\")\n",
      "lines": 4,
      "size": 42
    }
  },
  "tree": [
    "src/main.py",
    "README.md"
  ]
}

The JSON format includes:

files — object mapping file paths to their content, line count, and size
tree — flat list of file paths (directories are excluded)
prepend / append — included if --prepend / --append is used
stats — included if --stats is used

Line numbers¶

Add line numbers to file contents in any format:

dumpcat -n

1 | import sys
2 |
3 | def main():
4 |     print("hello")

Stats¶

Append a summary section with --stats / -s:

dumpcat -s

# Stats

- Files: 12
- Lines: 847
- Estimated tokens: 3200

Token estimation uses a simple characters / 4 heuristic.