[from catenate via {Unix} cat(1)]
1. [techspeak] To spew an entire file to the screen or some other
output sink without pause (syn. {blast}).
2. By extension, to dump large amounts of data at an unprepared
target or with no intention of browsing it carefully. Usage:
considered silly. Rare outside Unix sites. See also {dd}, {BLT}.
Among Unix fans, cat(1) is considered an excellent example of
user-interface design, because it delivers the file contents without
such verbosity as spacing or headers between the files, and because
it does not require the files to consist of lines of text, but works
with any sort of data.
Among Unix haters, cat(1) is considered the {canonical} example of
bad user-interface design, because of its woefully unobvious name. It
is far more often used to {blast} a file to standard output than to
concatenate two files. The name cat for the former operation is just
as unintuitive as, say, LISP's {cdr}.
Of such oppositions are {holy wars} made.... See also {UUOC}.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {blit}{dd}{UUOC}{well-behaved}]