4.3BSD-Reno/src/bin/cat/cat.1

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.\"     @(#)cat.1	6.12 (Berkeley) 7/24/90
.\"
.Dd July 24, 1990
.Dt CAT 1
.Os BSD 3
.Sh NAME
.Nm cat
.Nd concatenate and print files
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm cat
.Op Fl benstuv
.Op Fl
.Ar
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm cat
utility reads files sequentially, writing them to the standard output.
The
.Ar file
operands are processed in command line order.
A single dash represents standard input.
.Pp
The options are as follows:
.Tw Ds
.Tp Fl b
Implies the
.Fl n
option but doesn't number blank lines.
.Tp Fl e
Implies the
.Fl v
option, and displays a dollar sign (``$'') at the end of each line
as well.
.Tp Fl n
Number the
.Ar output
lines, starting at 1.
.Tp Fl s
Squeeze multiple adjacent empty lines, causing the output to be
single spaced.
.Tp Fl t
Implies the
.Fl v
option, and displays tab characters as ``^I'' as well.
.Tp Fl u
The
.Fl u
option guarantees that the output is unbuffered.
.Tp Fl 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.
.Tp
.Pp
.Nm Cat
is useful for getting files into a pipe, for instance, to sort
two files together,
the command
.Pp
.Dl cat file1 file2 | sort > sfile
.Pp
reads the contents of
file1 and file2 sequentially, pipes it all to sort and places the
newly sorted data in file3.
.Pp
Because of the shell language mechanism used to perform output
redirection, the command ``cat file1 file 2 > file1'' will cause
.P original data in file1 to be destroyed!
.Pp
.Nm Cat
The cat utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error
occurs.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr head 1 ,
.Xr more 1 ,
.Xr pr 1 ,
.Xr tail 1
.Pp
Rob Pike,
.Em UNIX Style, or cat -v Considered Harmful
USENIX Summer Conference Proceedings, 1983.
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
command appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.