E-Mail:
Author Avatar

What does “cat -” do?

Hello I would like to know the what exactly does cat - mean in Unix? I was recently reading through an article that mentioned this command and couldn’t understand what it did.

“cat” is the ‘concatenate’ program and its purpose is to display the contents of one or more file. Add the ‘-’ flag, however, and you have it display the content of “standard input” or “stdin”: in a pipe like:

tail myfile | cat -

It’s basically a null operation, since this is no different than doing…

One Comment

nice post……….I really appreciate that. If you are working on link exchange, how about we can exchange with each other.

What Do You Think?

 


Anti-Spam Image

Want to Start a Blog Here for Free?

Are you an expert in one subject or another? If your goal is to help others and dispense hard-earned information back to the community, stake a claim on your very own Lockergnome blog today! You can write about anything - no matter the topic. Sign-up to start blogging!

Author Avatar
Interview, Linux, Misc - Dec 19, 2007

KOffice vs OOXML: Practical, Not Political

Author Avatar
Myths - Dec 3, 2007

5 Myths That Stymie Linux Growth

Author Avatar
Just Ask Matt - Linux Edition - Nov 20, 2007

Default Sound Card Not Sticking In Ubuntu!