Why "cat" command is known as "cat"?

[Minal Silimkar-Urankar]

Meaning of "rm" is "remove", then what is the meaning of "cat" command?

[Jesper de Jong]

Maybe because it's not called "dog"? (Sorry...)

Wikipedia says:

The cat command is a standard Unix program used to concatenate and display files. The name is from catenate, a synonym of concatenate.

[Tim Holloway]

To construct Unix commands, you need 2 things:

1. a twisted sense of humor
2. An unwillingness to put any more letters in the command name than you actually have to.

I've actually seen the word as "catenate", but I doubt that's proper. The "con" in concatenate indicates putting things together.

[Jesper de Jong]

Here's something fun.

Unix also has a tac command. What do you think it does? And why do you think it is called "tac"?

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Originally posted by Jesper Young:
Unix also has a tac command. What do you think it does? And why do you think it is called "tac"?

My guess would be displaying a file backwards. Whether it is backwards one character/word/line at a time, I don't know yet. Off to google...

[Stefan Wagner]

prompt> echo -e  "Foobar\nThis is a test with cat and tac"
Foobar
This is a test with cat and tac
prompt> echo -e  "Foobar\nThis is a test with cat and tac" | tac
This is a test with cat and tac
Foobar

[Charles Lyons]

What about this?

> echo "able was I ere I saw elba"
able was I ere I saw elba
> echo "able was I ere I saw elba" | rev
able was I ere I saw elba

purportedly spoken by Napoleon. What's going on?

[Tim Holloway]

aibohphobia - a dread fear of palindromes.

Listed in Stan Kelley-Bootle's The Devil's DP Dictionary.

[Francesco Pasqualini]

My teacher in university told me that "cat" stands for vomit out (from "to cat" slang word ).

[Campbell Ritchie]

Why isn't this thread in MD?

Tim Holloway wrote:To construct Unix commands. . . .
An unwillingness to put any more letters in the command name than you actually have to.

Reluctance
to have your users understand what the commands mean?

I've actually seen the word as "catenate" . . .

I got told off for writing “catenate” which is only properly used about nuclear reactions.

. . . "cat" stands for vomit out . . .

Was that on 1st April?
And welcome to the Ranch

[Ron McLeod]

Maybe related to: Shoot the cat ?

[Tim Holloway]

Sorry. It's officially documented on the man page:

man 1 cat wrote:
CAT(1)                                                                         User Commands                                                                         CAT(1)

NAME
      cat - concatenate files and print on the standard output

I've never heard of "cat" as a synonym for vomit, myself. It'd have to be current circa[i] 1970 for that to be likely, though. The cat command is one of Unix'x oldest utilites and a prime example of never having 2 programs where 1 would do. Back then, you'd often "cat" stuff to the printer. These days it's more commonly used in its base form of gluing data from multiple files together. For printing, enscript or one of the GUI utilities such as evince offer better format options. The enscript utility even does code highlighting.

The original authors of Unix were [i]extremely unwilling to define long command names. The systems of the day had minimal storage ccapacity and in some cases, limited command parsing facilities as well. The minicomputer I used in the late 1970s only permitted commands to be 6 characters long and even IBM's top-of-the-line mainframes were restricted to 8.

It's one reason why so many of us got annoyed when systemd came out. Almost all of the systemd commands are around 8 characters or so, and even if the need for commands that didn't take up much disk space in a script has vanished, laziness and tradition still hold. Especially laziness.

Of course, the other extreme Unix-wise was Apple's Commando shell back in the late '80s. You'd have command names in the nature of "activateRemoteTerminalDevice". Come to think of it, I think PowerShell has a few like that too.

[Mike Simmons]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:

Tim Holloway wrote:I've actually seen the word as "catenate" . . .

I got told off for writing “catenate” which is only properly used about nuclear reactions.

Making use of the part of the OED website that I can see for free, I see from comparing usage-over-time graphs for
catenate vs concatenate... it look like "catenate" was way more popular before, say, 1860.  And it nearly died off around 1900-1920, but made a very modest comeback in the forties... probably related to [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenation]catenation[url].  (Though that's a chemical reaction, not a nuclear one.)  On the other hand, "concatenate" was not used much before the 1940s, but has grown quite a bit in use since then - it seems dominant nowadays.

[Tim Holloway]

Hmm. Looks like "concatenate" may be a classic case of redundant augmentation. Kind of like "pro-active" replaced "active".

I hate "pro-active". Ideally, it would mean anticipatory, which was the (admittedly more awkward) word I used to use, but in business, I usually see it employed more as an accusation or threat that you're not doing the job you should be already actively doing. I don't respond well to threats.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Tim Holloway wrote:. . . I hate "pro-active". Ideally, it would mean anticipatory . . .

It does have the connotation of anticipation on this side of the Pond.

[Tim Holloway]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:

Tim Holloway wrote:. . . I hate "pro-active". Ideally, it would mean anticipatory . . .

It does have the connotation of anticipation on this side of the Pond.

Around here, it's used to tell one to do what they're already supposed to be doing in an accusatory way.

Then again, I think pro-active has been a common usage over where you are for a long time. In US business, they seemed to have just relatively recently discovered it, scooped it up and applied the "small child with a hammer" approach.

So I guess you can put it in the same category as the different meaning for "tabled" in US vs UK terms.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Tim Holloway wrote:. . . I think pro-active has been a common usage over where you are for a long time. . . .

Yes, it has.

[Peter Rooke]

The mad genius George Carlin was probably right, pre-heated ovens, pre-boarding a flight etc

Anyway, as part of this boarding process, they say “we would like to pre-board…”…Well what exactly is that anyway? What does it mean to pre-board? You get on before you get on?
That’s another complaint of mine: too much use of this prefix “pre.” It’s all over the language now: pre-this, pre-that, “place the turkey in a pre-heated oven…” It’s ridiculous! There are only two states an oven can possibly exist in: HEATED OR UNHEATED!

The full quote is here: George Carlin - Airline Boarding

[Tim Holloway]

https://xkcd.com/2848/

With special attention to the water heater breakers

[Campbell Ritchie]

Peter Rooke wrote:. . . George Carlin . . .

. . . What does it mean to pre-board? You get on before you get on? . . .

. . .

No, you get off before you get on.
Is there such a crime as cruelty to words? Or murder of the English language?

This is beginning to sound more and more like an MD topic.