Jean Louis, > Like alias cat='sequence off; cat' something like that > > Somebody already mentioned there is cat -v to show nonprinting > characters with notation ^- and M- so that may be the solution and I > may be wrong there.
yes, 'cat -v' will do it for you. (or, i'd like to know if i've been wrong all these years! :) : cat `which cat` | cat -v | less cheers.