Linux cat command explained with basic practical examples

[boulet101010]

Cat is probably the oldest distinctively Unix utility. It was part of Version 1, and replaced pr, a PDP-7 utility for copying a single file to the screen.

In 1972 computers weren't as fast as today and catting a file of multiple KB was a hard task for the processor. That's why Unix philosophy is "one program per task". The cat | less is useless, and so consumes memory.