cat - Man Page

concatenate files and print on the standard output

Examples (TL;DR)

Synopsis

cat [OPTION]... [FILE]...

Description

Concatenate FILE(s) to standard output.

With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

-A,  --show-all

equivalent to -vET

-b,  --number-nonblank

number nonempty output lines, overrides -n

-e

equivalent to -vE

-E,  --show-ends

display $ at end of each line

-n,  --number

number all output lines

-s,  --squeeze-blank

suppress repeated empty output lines

-t

equivalent to -vT

-T,  --show-tabs

display TAB characters as ^I

-u

(ignored)

-v,  --show-nonprinting

use ^ and M- notation, except for LFD and TAB

--help

display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

Examples

cat f - g

Output f's contents, then standard input, then g's contents.

cat

Copy standard input to standard output.

Author

Written by Torbjorn Granlund and Richard M. Stallman.

Reporting Bugs

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>

See Also

tac(1)

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/cat>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) cat invocation'

Referenced By

catdoc(1), catppt(1), console(1), cpuset(7), devio(1), fetchlog(1), foomatic-rip(1), gio(1), kcc(1), ksh93(1), lz4(1), memcat(1), mksh(1), nbdkit-data-plugin(1), netcat(1), oggz-merge(1), oksh(1), parcat(1), perltie(1), pipebench(1), pmlogrewrite(1), proc(5), proc_pid_net(5), proc_scsi(5), pv(1), rabbitsign(1), readprofile(8), sipcalc(1), s-nail(1), sq(1), sq-inspect(1), srec_examples(1), systemd-socket-activate(1), tac(1), text-vimcolor(1), time_namespaces(7), ul(1), xls2csv(1), xmessage(1), xz(1).

January 2024 GNU coreutils 9.4