NAME
cat - catenate and print

SYNOPSIS
cat [ -benstuv ] file ...

DESCRIPTION
Cat reads each file in sequence and displays it on the standard
output. Thus

cat file

displays the file on the standard output, and

cat file1 file2 >file3

concatenates the first two files and places the result on the
third.

If no input file is given, or if the argument ‘-’ is encountered,
cat reads from the standard input file. Output is buffered in the
block size recommended by stat(2) unless the standard output is a
terminal, when it is line buffered. The -u option makes the output
completely unbuffered.

The -n option displays the output lines preceded by lines numbers,
numbered sequentially from 1. Specifying the -b option with the -n
option omits the line numbers from blank lines.

The -s option crushes out multiple adjacent empty lines so that the
output is displayed single spaced.

The -v option displays non-printing characters so that they are
visible. Control characters print like ^X for control-x; the
delete character (octal 0177) prints as ^?. Non-ascii characters
(with the high bit set) are printed as M- (for meta) followed by
the character of the low 7 bits. A -e option may be given with the
-v option, which displays a ‘$’ character at the end of each line.
Specifying the -t option with the -v option displays tab characters
as ^I.

SEE ALSO
cp(1), ex(1), more(1), pr(1), tail(1)

BUGS
Beware of ‘cat a b >a’ and ‘cat a b >b’, which destroy the input
files before reading them.