Unix Third Edition: Visual Quickstart Guide

Displaying File Contents with cat

Instead of using more to display files, you can use cat (as in “concatenate”), which displays files but does not pause so you can read the information. Instead, it displays the file or files—which whiz by onscreen—and leaves you looking at the last several lines of the file (Code Listing 1.8).

Code Listing 1.8. With cat, long files whirl by, and all you’ll see is the bottom of the file. You can also redirect cat output to a file, as shown at the end of the listing.

[jdoe@frazz jdoe]$ cat newest.programs.txt ... xpmtoppm* xpp* xpstat* xrfbviewer* xscreensaver.kss* xvminitoppm* xwdtopnm* xxd* yaf-cdda* yaf-mpgplay* yaf-splay* yaf-tplay* yaf-vorbis* yaf-yuv* ybmtopbm* yelp* yes* ypcat* ypchfn* ypchsh* ypmatch* ...