[Novalug] What is the name of a simple command|

[Bonnie Dalzell]

On Thu, 11 Jun 2009, Dan Arico wrote:

> On Thursday 11 June 2009 12:10:15 pm Tux Subscriber Dave Aronson wrote:
>> On 2009-06-11, Paul W. Frields <stickster at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Actually, the fact that you're displaying the results is simply a
>>>  by-product of not telling cat to do something else with standard
>>>  output.  For instance:
>>>
>>>  cat small1 small2 small3 > large-file
>>>
>>>  ...is a common use case for cat.
>>
>> Granted, that is *a* reasonably common use.  But enough to call it the
>> primary purpose, and thus a fitting thing to name it after?  I don't
>> think so.
>>
>> Perhaps my situation is unusual.  Quick show of hands: who uses it
>> like that, MORE often than to get the contents of a single file
>> (whether to display on the screen or to pipe into another command)?
>
> I use it that way almost exclusively.

how does using cat to display a file differ from using more or 
less to display a file? I always thought cat was for putting them 
together as above.


>
> Dan
>
>

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