cat Linux command with Examples

Overview

In this tutorial, we will learn about the cat Linux command with examples.

cat Linux command

The cat command reads one or more files and prints the file contents to the standard output device i.e computer monitor screen. cat is a short form of “concatenate”

To know more about the command and the command line switches type the following command:

$ man cat

Example

The simple cat command displays the file contents to the screen. For example, to view the file hello.cpp file on the screen.

$ cat hello.cpp

cat Linux command

The cat command can also be used to create and copy file contents. For example, the below command creates a new file called arguments.cpp, and the file contents of the hello.cpp are copied to the new file.

The > operator redirects the file contents to the file instead of displaying on the standard output screen.

$ cat hello.cpp > arguments.cpp

cat Copy command Linux