2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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cat
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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vt. [from catenate via Unix cat (1) ] 1. [techspeak] To spew an entire file
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to the screen or some other output sink without pause (syn. blast ). 2. By
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extension, to dump large amounts of data at an unprepared target or with no
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intention of browsing it carefully. Usage: considered silly. Rare outside
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Unix sites. See also dd , BLT. Among Unix fans, cat (1) is considered an
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excellent example of user-interface design, because it delivers the file
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contents without such verbosity as spacing or headers between the files, and
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because it does not require the files to consist of lines of text, but works
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with any sort of data. Among Unix haters, cat (1) is considered the
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canonical example of bad user-interface design, because of its woefully
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unobvious name. It is far more often used to blast a file to standard output
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than to concatenate two files. The name cat for the former operation is just
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as unintuitive as, say, LISP's cdr. Of such oppositions are holy wars
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made.... See also UUOC.
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