4BSD/usr/man/cat1/cat.1

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CAT(1)              UNIX Programmer's Manual               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 writes it on the stan-
     dard output.  Thus

                    cat file

     prints the file, 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 encoun-
     tered, _c_a_t reads from the standard input file.  Output is
     buffered in 1024-byte blocks unless the standard output is a
     terminal, in which case it is line buffered.  The -u option
     causes the output to be completely unbuffered.

     The option -n causes the output lines to be numbered sequen-
     tially from 1.  Giving -b with -n causes numbers to be omit-
     ted from blank lines.

     The option -s causes the output to be single spaced by
     crushing out multiple adjacent empty lines.

     The option -v causes non-printing characters to be printed
     in a visible way.  Control characters print like ^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 of the low 7 bits.
     A -e option may be given with -v and causes the ends of
     lines to be followed by the character `$'; the -t option
     with -v causes tabs to be printed 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.








Printed 11/10/80                                                1