cat(1)

cat -- concatenate and print files

Synopsis

cat [-suv [-et]] [file ... ]

Description

cat reads each file in sequence and writes it on the standard output. Thus

cat file

prints the contents of file on your terminal, and

cat file1 file2 >file3

concatenates file1 and file2, and writes the results in file3. If no input file is given, or if the argument - is encountered, cat reads from the standard input. cat processes supplementary code set characters according to the locale specified in the LC_CTYPE environment variable (see LANG on environ(5)).

The following options apply to cat:

-u: The output is not buffered. (The default is buffered output.)
-s: cat is silent about non-existent files.
-v: Causes non-printing characters (with the exception of tabs, new-lines, and form-feeds) to be 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. All supplementary code set characters are considered to be printable.

The following options may be used with the -v option:

-t: Causes tabs to be printed as ^I and formfeeds to be printed as ^L.
-e: Causes a ``$'' character to be printed at the end of each line (prior to the new-line).

The -t and -e options are ignored if the -v option is not specified.

Files

/usr/lib/locale/locale/LC_MESSAGES/uxcore.abi: language-specific message file (See LANG on environ(5).)

Return values

cat returns the following values:

0: If all input files were output successfully.
>0: If an error occurred while accessing one or more input files.

References

cp(1), pg(1), pr(1)

Notices

This command has been updated to handle files greater than 2GB.