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I've sometimes heard it's "catenate" not "concatenate". Do they mean the same thing? As for cat, the utility, I'm afraid we'll never stop seeing people doing
by shorter 14y ago
I've sometimes heard it's "catenate" not "concatenate".
Do they mean the same thing?
As for cat, the utility, I'm afraid we'll never stop seeing people doing
cat file|prog1|prog2
even when it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
If it did, I might as well do
cat file|cat|prog|cat|prog2|cat -
I mean, why not? It "looks nicer" than
prog file|prog2 or
prog < file|prog2
Programmers love their cats.
- ralph 14y agoIt's most definitely catenate. I understand catenate to mean chain and concatenate to be to chain together. Since "cat foo bar xyzzy" doesn't modify the files to join them in any way I don't think they're chained together. Besides, ken & Co. aren't daft. con would be short for concatenate. :-)
- ishkur101 14y agoFrom the man page cat doc1 doc2 > doc.all concatenates the files doc1 and doc2 and writes the result to doc.all
- EchoAbstract 14y agoAccording to the 1st Edition and 6th Edition manual pages: NAME cat -- concatenate and print See: http://man.cat-v.org/unix-1st/1/cat http://man.cat-v.org/unix-1st/1/cat http://man.cat-v.org/unix-6th/1/cat http://man.cat-v.org/unix-6th/1/cat I'm pretty sure based on the timeline of pipe (~1973, roughly V4) that the cat command (~1971 V1) predates pipes.
- ralph 14y agoFortunately they fixed that errant man page. :-) http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/cat http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/cat