CAT(1) CAT(1) NAME cat - catenate and print SYNOPSIS cat [ -u ] [ -n ] [ -s ] [ -v ] file ... DESCRIPTION _C_a_t reads each _f_i_l_e in sequence and displays it on the standard output. Thus cat file displays the file on the standard output, and cat file1 file2 >file3 concatenates the first two files and places the result on the third. If no input file is given, or if the argument ‘-’ is encountered, _c_a_t reads from the standard input file. Output is buffered in the block size recommended by _s_t_a_t(2) unless the standard output is a terminal, when it is line buffered. The -u option makes the output completely unbuffered. The -n option displays the output lines preceded by lines numbers, num‐ bered sequentially from 1. Specifying the -b option with the -n option omits the line numbers from blank lines. The -s option crushes out multiple adjacent empty lines so that the output is displayed single spaced. The -v option displays non-printing characters so that they are visi‐ ble. Control characters print like ^X for control-x; the delete char‐ acter (octal 0177) prints as ^?. Non-ascii characters (with the high bit set) are printed as M- (for meta) followed by the character of the low 7 bits. A -e option may be given with the -v option, which dis‐ plays a ‘$’ character at the end of each line. Specifying the -t option with the -v option displays tab characters as ^I. SEE ALSO cp(1), ex(1), more(1), pr(1), tail(1) BUGS Beware of ‘cat a b >a’ and ‘cat a b >b’, which destroy the input files before reading them. 4th Berkeley Distribution May 5, 1986 CAT(1)