cat

cat is a shell command for writing the content of a file or input stream to standard output. The name is an abbreviation of catenate, a variant form of concatenate. Originally developed for Unix, it is available on many operating systems and shells today.

In addition to combining files, cat is commonly used to copy files and in particular to copy a file to the terminal monitor. Unless redirected, cat outputs file content on-screen.

• GNU Coreutils Project Homepage [EN]

• GNU Coreutils [EN] @ Fedora Package
• GNU Coreutils [EN] @ Homebrew Formula

• cat [EN] @ Wikipedia
• cat [DE] @ Wikipedia

Documentation

• cat [EN] @ GNU Coreutils Manual

• man 1 'cat' [EN]

Further Information

• Useless Use of Cat Award [EN] @ era eriksson entangled

Syntax

cat [PARAMETER ...] [FILE ...]

Parameters

-n, --number

Number all output lines.

Examples

Create a image from a Floppy

cat '/dev/fd0' >'/tmp/floppy.img'

Restore a image to a Floppy

cat '/tmp/floppy.img' >'/dev/fd0'

Paste content into a file

NOTE:

Press [Ctrl] + [D] to end the input.

cat >'file.txt'
bla
bla
bla