Manual page for cat(1)
cat - concatenate and display files
SYNOPSIS
cat
[
-nbsuvet
]
[file...]
AVAILABILITY
SUNWcsu
DESCRIPTION
cat
reads each
file
in sequence
and writes it on the standard output.
Thus:
-
example% cat file
prints
file
on your terminal, and:
-
example% cat file1 file2 >file3
concatenates
file1
and
file2,
and writes the results in
file3.
If no input file is given,
cat
reads from the standard
input file.
OPTIONS
- -n
-
Precede each line output with its line number.
- -b
-
Number the lines, as
-n,
but omit the line numbers from blank lines.
- -u
-
The output is not buffered.
(The default is buffered output.)
- -s
-
cat
is silent about non-existent files.
- -v
-
Non-printing characters
(with the exception of tabs, new-lines
and form-feeds)
are printed visibly.
ASCII
control characters (octal 000 - 037) are printed as
^n,
where
n
is the corresponding
ASCII
character in the range octal 100 - 137
(@, A, B, C, . . ., X, Y, Z, [, \, ], ^, and _);
the
DEL
character (octal 0177) is printed
^?.
Other non-printable characters are printed
as
M-x,
where
x
is the
ASCII
character specified by the low-order seven bits.
When used with the
-v
option,
the following options may be used:
- -e
-
A
$
character will be printed at the end of each line
(prior to the new-line).
- -t
-
Tabs will be printed as
^I's
and formfeeds to be printed as
^L's.
The
-e
and
-t
options are ignored if the
-v
option is not specified.
OPERANDS
The following operand is supported:
- file
-
A path name of an input file.
If no
file
is specified,
the standard input is used.
If
file
is
`-',
cat
will read from the standard input at that point in the sequence.
cat
will not close and reopen standard input when
it is referenced in this way, but will accept multiple occurrences of
`-'
as
file.
EXAMPLES
- 1.
-
The following command:
-
example% cat myfile
-
writes the contents of the file
myfile
to standard output.
- 2.
-
The following command:
-
example% cat doc1 doc2 > doc.all
-
concatenates the files
doc1
and
doc2
and writes the result to
doc.all.
- 3.
-
The command:
-
example% cat start - middle - end > file
-
when standard input is a terminal, gets two arbitrary pieces of
input from the terminal with a single invocation of
cat.
Note, however, that if standard input is a regular file, this would be
equivalent to the command:
-
cat start - middle /dev/null end > file
-
because the entire contents of the file would be consumed by
cat
the first time
`-'
was used as a
file
operand and an end-of-file
condition would be detected immediately when
`-'
was referenced the second time.
ENVIRONMENT
See
environ.5
for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect
the execution of
cat:
LC_CTYPE,
LC_MESSAGES,
and
NLSPATH.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
- 0
-
All input files were output successfully.
- >0
-
An error occurred.
SEE ALSO
touch.1
environ.5
NOTES
Redirecting the output of
cat
onto one of the files being read will cause
the loss of the data originally in the file being read.
For example,
-
example% cat filename1 filename2 >filename1
causes the original data in
filename1
to be lost.
Created by unroff & hp-tools.
© by Hans-Peter Bischof. All Rights Reserved (1997).
Last modified 21/April/97
