Questions tagged [cat]

cat is a command-line utility used to concatenate or copy the contents to standard output from a file or standard input (if no file name is passed).

cat is a command-line utility provided by GNU Coreutils which can be used to concatenate the content to standard output from a file or standard input (if no file name is passed).

To print the content of a file (let's say, ubuntu.txt), use:

cat ubuntu.txt

Details about the options/flags for cat can be found in the manpage.

On systems like MS-DOS that distinguish between text and binary files, cat normally reads and writes in binary mode. However, cat reads in text mode if one of the options -bensAE is used or if cat is reading from standard input and standard input is a terminal. Similarly, cat writes in text mode if one of the options -bensAE is used or if standard output is a terminal.[source]

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omit filenames in grep

I am greping a string from multiple files, but the one undesired side effect, is the filename prefacing the output. How can I suppress the filename outputs using only grep? $ grep -i lp lpNet* lpNet:This was printed via the internet using…
j0h
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Can `cat` show files using code markup in colors?

Sometimes I quickly want to view the contents of a file from the command line. For this I of course use cat, but it is often source files in Python, Java or simple HTML. For these files it would be handy if cat could give some color markup to the…
kramer65
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What is the difference between "cat < filename" and "cat filename"?

The simplest way to display file contents is using the cat command: cat file.txt I can get the same result using input redirection: cat < file.txt Then, what is the difference between them?
BlueSkies
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How to use `cat` to see the top of a very long file?

I'd like to know how to cat my-verylong-file and show it from the top instead of the end. Like the man command does.
IDK
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What's wrong with my cat command?

I lent a friend a computer with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on it, and he messed up the cat command. $ cat testfile.txt cat: meow! $ Can someone tell me how to fix this? please? Output of which cat: /bin/cat
TheDoctor
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What is 'cat' used for?

I've seen the cat command come up in some online stuff and I was curious as to what cat did and what it's for in the context of someone who is just doing some simple command line stuff.
cosmoflop12
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Appending a line to a file in the cat command?

I can do cat file.txt to get the contents of a file but I also want to tack on a final line of my own choosing. I tried piping (cat file.txt ; echo "My final line") | but only the final line is getting passed through the pipe. How can I join the cat…
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When run cat says: "Hello, nothing to see here! Move along!"

PLEASE NOTE: To view the comments on this and the extended discussion on this, which includes all that has been tried, please look at this chat room. Today when I ran the cat command, instead of the contents of a file, I got: Hello, nothing to see…
user364819
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How do I 'cat' a text file but start from the bottom instead of top

I have a very big text log file of about 37MB. Using cat file | more I can view the file contents one page at a time. The problem is that this always starts from the top - the old entries. How can I make it start from the bottom where the newer…
Parto
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cat command doesn't show the lines of the text

i am trying to read an odt file from terminal. When i type cat myfile.odt it shows me an image like this
Angelos G
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Difference between cat and sudo cat?

Can you tell me what the difference is between cat and sudo cat? All I know so far is that cat is used for displaying contents of file and concatenation.
Edison
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How to use the cat command to find a specific word in a textfile

I did some research but I was unable to find anything to help, I need to find the word "war" in a text file, I know that I can use the cat command, but I need to modify it somehow, can someone help?
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How to replace cat with bat system-wide Ubuntu 22.04

I am using Ubuntu 22.04 with bash, pretty vanilla, and have added alias cat="batcat" to ~/.bashrc. The program batcat or bat being referred to can be found here: https://github.com/sharkdp/bat So, when I run cat ~/.bashrc, for instance, it outputs…
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How to unzip only the first few lines of a zip archive?

I have a zipped text file a.zip I want to read the first 10 lines of it. Is it possible to do that without unzipping the whole file?
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I just ran cat /dev/zero and now cat is hanging

I ran cat /dev/zero and it now just hangs whenever I run a cat command. I pressed Ctrl+C to stop that command. Have I broken something, and how can I fix it?
Tim
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