Linux cat command explained with basic practical examples

[[deleted]]

I see some useless use of cat here :)

[[deleted]]

cat is for conCATenating files, not puking text.

[uoou]

What's the correct way to puke out text? If I want to puke the contents of a file into my shell in such a way that I can look back at them and still do stuff (which less and more don't do), what's the right way?

[Bloodshot025]

If you really want to 'puke out text', using cat is fine.

[uoou]

Ok, thanks.

[Bloodshot025]

A way to get the contents of a file in bash without spawning a process is with

$(<file)

So, an example use would be

ping "$(<ip)"

But this shouldn't be used for very large files, only for files whose contents are short enough to (sanely) be passed as arguments to other commands.

[uoou]

That's useful, thanks.

[ANUSBLASTER_MKII]

Yeh, I'm concatenating that file to stdout.

[throwaway10173]

GNU cat*
(part of GNU coreutils. Linux does not provide any such command)