On 22/01/30 06:40PM, inasprec...@disroot.org wrote: > Why is cat -v considered bad? I see that people often bring up > this particular example as a way to illustrate bad extensions, but > what exactly makes it so? >
cat stands for conCATenate, which means to link together. The purpose is to combine multiple files into a single stream. cat -v shows nonprinting characters. It has nothing to do with concatenating files. If you want to see what's in a file, use a pager like less or text editor like vim. Both programs display like cat -v, in color, and probably by default. And cat -v is kind of broken, because it can't show you difference between real and ^X (two characters ^ and X). cat is misused often. People seem to use it to view files. That's also where you get "useless use of cat from". A pager or text editor is for viewing files. cat is for concatenating. I don't know the history, maybe there was some good reason. But right now it'd be bad to use it. Can't tell ^X from . And files rarely are smaller than a screen, so you need pager/editor anyways, to see whole file. Hope it was somewhat helpful. Maybe someone more experienced will add something. Regards, mat
