1.\" Copyright (c) 1989, 1990, 1993 2.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by 5.\" the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. 6.\" 7.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 8.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 9.\" are met: 10.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 11.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 12.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 13.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 14.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 15.\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software 16.\" must display the following acknowledgement: 17.\" This product includes software developed by the University of 18.\" California, Berkeley and its contributors. 19.\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors 20.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 21.\" without specific prior written permission. 22.\" 23.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 24.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 25.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 26.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 27.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 28.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 29.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 30.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 31.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 32.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 33.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 34.\" 35.\" @(#)cat.1 8.3 (Berkeley) 5/2/95 36.\" $FreeBSD$ 37.\" 38.Dd May 2, 1995 39.Dt CAT 1 40.Os BSD 3 41.Sh NAME 42.Nm cat 43.Nd concatenate and print files 44.Sh SYNOPSIS 45.Nm cat 46.Op Fl benstuv 47.Op Fl 48.Op Ar 49.Sh DESCRIPTION 50The 51.Nm 52utility reads files sequentially, writing them to the standard output. 53The 54.Ar file 55operands are processed in command line order. 56A single dash represents the standard input. 57.Pp 58The options are as follows: 59.Bl -tag -width indent 60.It Fl b 61Number the non-blank output lines, starting at 1. 62.It Fl e 63Display non-printing characters (see the 64.Fl v 65option), and display a dollar sign 66.Pq Ql \&$ 67at the end of each line. 68.It Fl n 69Number the output lines, starting at 1. 70.It Fl s 71Squeeze multiple adjacent empty lines, causing the output to be 72single spaced. 73.It Fl t 74Display non-printing characters (see the 75.Fl v 76option), and display tab characters as 77.Ql ^I . 78.It Fl u 79The 80.Fl u 81option guarantees that the output is unbuffered. 82.It Fl v 83Display non-printing characters so they are visible. 84Control characters print as 85.Ql ^X 86for control-X; the delete 87character (octal 0177) prints as 88.Ql ^? 89.Pf Non- Tn ASCII 90characters (with the high bit set) are printed as 91.Ql M- 92(for meta) followed by the character for the low 7 bits. 93.El 94.Sh DIAGNOSTICS 95The 96.Nm 97utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. 98.Sh BUGS 99Because of the shell language mechanism used to perform output 100redirection, the command 101.Dq Li cat file1 file2 > file1 102will cause the original data in file1 to be destroyed! 103.Sh SEE ALSO 104.Xr head 1 , 105.Xr more 1 , 106.Xr pr 1 , 107.Xr tail 1 , 108.Xr vis 1 109.Rs 110.%A Rob Pike 111.%T "UNIX Style, or cat -v Considered Harmful" 112.%J "USENIX Summer Conference Proceedings" 113.%D 1983 114.Re 115.Sh HISTORY 116A 117.Nm 118command appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX. 119.An Dennis Ritchie 120designed and wrote the first man page. 121It appears to have been 122.Xr cat 1 . 123 124