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Linux Cat (thelemmy.club)

ahh

~$ which cat
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[-] dan@upvote.au 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Admittedly I still use cat for this.

This also works too, but it's more verbose:

echo "$(<foo.txt)"

It's mentioned in the Bash man pages:

The command substitution $(cat file) can be replaced by the equivalent but faster $(< file).

EDIT: I was just informed that simply <foo.txt works too.

[-] not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 20 hours ago

how in the world is this not a useless use of echo and equivalent to <foo.txt

[-] dan@upvote.au 4 points 19 hours ago

OK, TIL you can just do <foo.txt. I didn't think that worked. Thanks!

this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
384 points (98.0% liked)

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