Subject: Re: using cat on binary files (CTRL-Z trauma)
From: [email-masked] (Jim Balter)

30 Oct 1996 00:56:54 -0800
Sender: [email-masked]
Approved: [email-masked]
Distribution: cygnus
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Original-To: [email-masked]
In-Reply-To: <[email-masked]> from "Scott R. Sewall" at Oct 29, 96 08:05:40 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23]
Content-Length: 681       
Original-Sender: [email-masked]

Scott R. Sewall wrote:
> > > From: "Henrik Geleff" <[email-masked]>
> > > - cat was intended to show text files -- cat'ing binary files to an ASCII
> > > terminal can bring the terminal into a state which you can not escape from

> I can't resist, this thread is too good!
> 
> The man page for cat from SunOS 5.4 says:
> 
>      cat -- concatonate and display files.
> 
> it suggests that cat can be used for displaying files, but
> not necessarily text files, since that concept doesn't
> exist with Unix.

Of course "can be used to" is nothing like "was intended to".  cat is a basic
tool that can be used to do a lot of things; that's the unix methodology.

-- 
<J Q B>

-
For help on using this list, send a message to
"[email-masked]" with one line of text: "help".