If you are using a Linux computer, the operations are very different compared to Windows and macOS. You get both a graphical user interface and a command line interface. Although GUI seems to be the easy option to perform operations, CLI has its own advantages. If you are well-versed in all the important Linux Terminal commands, you can get things done in no time. One of the most used commands on Linux is the cat command. It comes preinstalled as part of the coreutils package on all Linux distributions, and the syntax is the same for all distros. That said, we will show how to use the cat command with some practical examples in this article.

Before looking at the examples, let's understand what is the cat command along with its syntax and options. Then we'll learn how to use the cat command effectively to display single or multiple files, merge files, sort them, and more.

The cat command stands for concatenate, and it is one of the most important commands in every Linux user's toolbox. It was first made for the UNIX operating system but was later adapted by Linux and macOS. The main purpose of this command is file management, and it allows the user to create new files, display file contents, overwrite files, merge two or more files, etc.

Before we can dive into some practical examples, let's see the syntax of the cat command in Linux. The syntax is simple and straightforward. Here is the syntax, where you have to use an option along with the filenames depending on the task you want to perform.