CAT(1)

📦 version 1.053, in alpine 3.24

💖 CAT(1) 💖

okay so bestie, this is a page from the User Contributed Perl Documentation and it's literally all about cat, the most iconic little file-printer in the game. she's simple, she's reliable, she ate 💅

🌸 NAME 🌸

cat — concatenate and print files 🐱✨

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

cat [-benstuv] [file ...]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the vibe: cat reads the files you hand her and prints them in the order you gave them. that's it, that's the whole job, and she does it flawlessly.

if you give her no files at all? she just processes standard input. very chill of her. and a lone dash also represents standard input, so you can drop - in the middle of your file list and she'll know exactly what you mean 🫶

✨ OPTIONS ✨

cat accepts the following options, bestie:

  • -b — number all the non-blank lines, starting at 1. blank lines get to stay un-numbered, they're just vibing 💀
  • -e — print a dollar sign ($) at the end of each line. implies -v, so keep that in mind 😌
  • -n — number all the lines, starting at 1. no exceptions, every single one gets a number 👑
  • -s — the squeeze option. sequential empty lines get squeezed down into a single empty line. very minimal, very clean ✨
  • -t — display tabs as ^I. implies -v too 🔥
  • -u — unbuffer output. she stops holding it in and just goes 🏃‍♀️
  • -v — display non-printable characters in a printable way. here's the tea:
    • characters in the range \000 - \037, with the exception of tabs and linefeeds, are printed as ^X, where X is the symbol \0100 higher
    • DEL is printed as ^?
    • characters whose highest bit is set are printed as M-, followed by the representation of the character with the high bit stripped

like, it's giving decoder ring energy, and we love that for her 🔍💜

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

the working of cat is not influenced by any environment variables. she is unbothered, she is ungovernable, she does not read the room (or your env) 😌💅

💀 BUGS 💀

cat has no known bugs. not me being flawless, but like… she literally has no known bugs. periodt 👑

⭐ STANDARDS ⭐

this cat implementation is compliant with the IEEE Std1003.2-1992 specification, also known as POSIX.2.

she's also compatible with the OpenBSD implementation. range, honestly 🦋

👑 AUTHOR 👑

the Perl implementation of cat was written by Abigail, perlpowertools@abigail.be. thank you Abigail, you absolute icon 🫶✨

this program is copyright by Abigail 1999.

this program is free and open software. you may use, copy, modify, distribute and sell this program (and any modified variants) in any way you wish, provided you do not restrict others to the same 🌸 — like, share the love, don't gatekeep, iykyk 💖

ngl the whole page is like seven lines of actual content and yet she's iconic. no cap 🧚‍♀️

mwah 💋 — this was perl v5.42.2, dated 2026-02-15, and that's the CAT(1) page, done and dusted 🎀

📦 where this page comes from