A Comprehensive Guide to the Cat Command for Adding Content to Files
When it comes to file manipulation, the cat
command is a powerful tool similar to tail
in some ways. However, what sets cat
apart is its ability to not only display file content but also add content to a file.
To begin with, let’s explore the basic usage of cat
. The command cat file
simply prints the content of a file to the standard output.
You can also use cat
to print the content of multiple files by specifying them all together: cat file1 file2
.
If you want to combine the content of multiple files into a new file, you can use the >
operator for redirection: cat file1 file2 > file3
. This will create a new file (file3
) and concatenate the content of file1
and file2
within it.
To append the content of multiple files to an existing file, you can utilize the >>
operator: cat file1 file2 >> file3
. This will add the content of file1
and file2
at the end of file3
. If file3
doesn’t exist, it will be created.
One useful feature of cat
is its ability to display line numbers. By using the -n
option (cat -n file1
), you can view the content of file1
along with line numbers. If you only want to add line numbers to non-blank lines, you can use the -b
option. Additionally, the -s
option removes multiple empty lines from the output.
Another way to utilize cat
is by combining it with the pipe operator |
to pass the content of a file as input to another command. For example: cat file1 | anothercommand
.
It’s important to note that the cat
command works not only on Linux but also on macOS, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), and any UNIX environment.
Tags: Linux commands, cat command, file manipulation, command line, UNIX environment