cat invocation (GNU Coreutils 9.0)
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3.1 cat: Concatenate and write files
cat copies each file (‘-’ means standard input), or standard input if none are given, to standard output. Synopsis:
cat [option] [file]…
The program accepts the following options. Also see Common options.
- ‘
-A’
‘--show-all’ Equivalent to
-vET.- ‘
-b’
‘--number-nonblank’ Number all nonempty output lines, starting with 1.
- ‘
-e’ Equivalent to
-vE.- ‘
-E’
‘--show-ends’ Display a ‘
$’ after the end of each line. The\r\ncombination is shown as ‘^M$’.- ‘
-n’
‘--number’ Number all output lines, starting with 1. This option is ignored if
-bis in effect.- ‘
-s’
‘--squeeze-blank’ Suppress repeated adjacent blank lines; output just one empty line instead of several.
- ‘
-t’ Equivalent to
-vT.- ‘
-T’
‘--show-tabs’ Display TAB characters as ‘
^I’.- ‘
-u’ Ignored; for POSIX compatibility.
- ‘
-v’
‘--show-nonprinting’ Display control characters except for LFD and TAB using ‘
^’ notation and precede characters that have the high bit set with ‘M-’.
On systems like MS-DOS that distinguish between text and binary files, cat normally reads and writes in binary mode. However, cat reads in text mode if one of the options -bensAE is used or if cat is reading from standard input and standard input is a terminal. Similarly, cat writes in text mode if one of the options -bensAE is used or if standard output is a terminal.
An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value indicates failure.
Examples:
# Output f's contents, then standard input, then g's contents. cat f - g # Copy standard input to standard output. cat
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