Copyright (c) 1989 The Regents of the University of California.
All rights reserved.

%sccs.include.redist.man%

@(#)cat.1 6.7 (Berkeley) 05/31/90

C 1 cat - concatenate and print files cat [ -benstuv ] [ - ] [ file ... ] The cat utility reads files sequentially, writing them to the standard output. The file operands are processed in command line order. A single dash represents standard input.

The options are as follows:

-b Implies the -n option but doesn't number blank lines.

-e Implies the -v option, and displays a dollar sign (``$'') at the end of each line as well.

-n Number the output lines, starting at 1.

-s Squeeze multiple adjacent empty lines, causing the output to be single spaced.

-t Implies the -v option, and displays tab characters as ``^I'' as well.

-u The -u option guarantees that the output is unbuffered.

-v Displays non-printing characters so they are visible. Control characters print line ``^X'' for control-X; the delete character (octal 0177) prints as ``^?''. Non-ascii characters (with the high bit set) are printed as ``M-'' (for meta) followed by the character for the low 7 bits.

The command ``cat file1 file2 > file3'' concatenates the contents of file1 and file2 and places the result in file3.

Because of the shell language mechanism used to perform output redirection, the command ``cat file1 file 2 > file1'' will cause the original data in file1 to be destroyed!

Cat exits 0 on success, >0 if an error occurred.

head(1), more(1), pr(1), tail(1)

Rob Pike, ``UNIX Style, or cat -v Considered Harmful'' USENIX Summer Conference Proceedings, 1983.