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 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/29/93 36.\" 37.Dd June 29, 1993 38.Dt CAT 1 39.Os BSD 3 40.Sh NAME 41.Nm cat 42.Nd concatenate and print files 43.Sh SYNOPSIS 44.Nm cat 45.Op Fl benstuv 46.Op Fl 47.Op Ar 48.Sh DESCRIPTION 49The 50.Nm cat 51utility reads files sequentially, writing them to the standard output. 52The 53.Ar file 54operands are processed in command line order. 55A single dash represents the standard input. 56.Pp 57The options are as follows: 58.Bl -tag -width Ds 59.It Fl b 60Implies the 61.Fl n 62option but doesn't number blank lines. 63.It Fl e 64Implies the 65.Fl v 66option, and displays a dollar sign 67.Pq Ql \&$ 68at the end of each line 69as well. 70.It Fl n 71Number the 72.Ar output 73lines, starting at 1. 74.It Fl s 75Squeeze multiple adjacent empty lines, causing the output to be 76single spaced. 77.It Fl t 78Implies the 79.Fl v 80option, and displays tab characters as 81.Pq Ql ^I 82as well. 83.It Fl u 84The 85.Fl u 86option guarantees that the output is unbuffered. 87.It Fl v 88Displays non-printing characters so they are visible. 89Control characters print as 90.Ql ^X 91for control-X; the delete 92character (octal 0177) prints as 93.Ql ^? 94Non-ascii characters (with the high bit set) are printed as 95.Ql M- 96(for meta) followed by the character for the low 7 bits. 97.El 98.Pp 99The 100.Nm cat 101utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. 102.Sh BUGS 103Because of the shell language mechanism used to perform output 104redirection, the command 105.Dq Li cat file1 file 2 > file1 106will cause the original data in file1 to be destroyed! 107.Sh SEE ALSO 108.Xr head 1 , 109.Xr more 1 , 110.Xr pr 1 , 111.Xr tail 1 112.Rs 113.%A Rob Pike 114.%T "UNIX Style, or cat -v Considered Harmful" 115.%J "USENIX Summer Conference Proceedings" 116.%D 1983 117.Re 118.Sh HISTORY 119A 120.Nm 121command appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX. 122