cat (Unix)

cat is a standard Unix utility that reads files sequentially, writing them to standard output. The name is derived from its function to (con)catenate files (from Latin catenare, "to chain"). It has been ported to a number of operating systems.

For other uses of cat, see Cat (disambiguation) and Cat.
cat
Original author(s)Ken Thompson,
Dennis Ritchie
Developer(s)AT&T Bell Laboratories
Initial releaseNovember 3, 1971 (1971-11-03)
Operating systemUnix, Unix-like, Plan 9, Inferno, ReactOS
PlatformCross-platform
TypeCommand
Licensecoreutils: GPLv3+
ReactOS: GPLv2+

The other primary purpose of cat, aside from concatenation, is file printing — allowing the computer user to view the contents of a file. Printing to files and the terminal are the most common uses of cat.

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