.\" Copyright (c) 1989, 1990 The Regents of the University of California.
.\" %sccs.include.redist.man%
.\" @(#)cat.1 6.12 (Berkeley) %G%
.Nd concatenate and print files
utility reads files sequentially, writing them to the standard output.
operands are processed in command line order.
A single dash represents standard input.
The options are as follows:
option but doesn't number blank lines.
option, and displays a dollar sign (``$'') at the end of each line
Squeeze multiple adjacent empty lines, causing the output to be
option, and displays tab characters as ``^I'' as well.
option guarantees that the output is unbuffered.
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.
is useful for getting files into a pipe, for instance, to sort
.Dl cat file1 file2 | sort > sfile
file1 and file2 sequentially, pipes it all to sort and places the
newly sorted data in file3.
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!
The cat utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error
.Em UNIX Style, or cat -v Considered Harmful
USENIX Summer Conference Proceedings, 1983.
command appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
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