Gnu/coreutils/cat-invocation
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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.- ‘
-n
’
‘--number
’ Number all output lines, starting with 1. This option is ignored if
-b
is 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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