# why 'cat'?



## fluca1978 (Nov 7, 2019)

This has puzzled several students of mine while introducing `cat` as _con*cat*_ command: they tend to think to the animal noun instead of the ending of 'concat'.
So here's the question: why the name of `cat` is spelled as it is? I think it could descend from some Lisp or other programming language construct, but apparently I'm not able to find any reasonable explaination.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 7, 2019)

Do they also struggle with why the sky is called blue?


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## kpedersen (Nov 7, 2019)

Perhaps you can tell them the *cat* stands for *cataplasm* instead.

In Latin and Greek it vaguely means "to plaster over".

So if you did something like (don't do this):

`# cat /dev/urandom > /etc/passwd`

Then your system is now probably pretty plastered.


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## SirDice (Nov 7, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Do they also struggle with why the sky is called blue?


While that might sound obvious, there are certain cultures that will tell you the sky is, in fact, green.


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## userxbw (Nov 7, 2019)

maybe Microsoft had something to do with it..

```
The Microsoft Excel CONCAT function allows you to join 2 or more strings together. 
It was released in Excel 2016 and replaces the CONCATENATE function.
As a worksheet function, the CONCAT function can be entered as part of a formula in a cell of a
worksheet.
```
it's just a thought.


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## Crivens (Nov 7, 2019)

SirDice said:


> While that might sound obvious, there are certain cultures that will tell you the sky is, in fact, green.


Mainly those living in rainforest?
Or when there are more words for blue? Russian has two, me thinks.


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## SirDice (Nov 7, 2019)

Crivens said:


> Mainly those living in rainforest?


Among others, yes. If I recall correctly they can discern more shades of green than we can too. 


Crivens said:


> Or when there are more words for blue? Russian has two, me thinks.


Language differences can be confusing too, with the same word used for both green and blue. 




__





						Blue–green distinction in language - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				




The point I was trying to make is that it's not at all obvious that the sky is blue. A significant section of the world's population can and will be utterly confused by that.


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## Crivens (Nov 7, 2019)

Data's daughter in TNG : "Why is the sky black?"


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## scottro (Nov 7, 2019)

In Japan the word for blue, aoi can also mean green. There is a separate word for green, midori, but aoi is often used.  Like the American (as far as I know, it quite possibly originated elsewhere) The grass is always greener on the other side, they have a proverb, tonari no shiba aoi. Tonari (next) no (a possesive) shiba (lawn) aoi (green in this case.)  Sometimes Japanese will call something blue that we'd call green and vice versa.

(Married to native speaker for over 20 years).


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## msplsh (Nov 7, 2019)

fluca1978 said:


> So here's the question: why the name of `cat` is spelled as it is?



Because it's short and it's short for concatenate.  That's all there is to it.









						The real reason why UNIX commands are short
					

I was watching videos about my favorite topic, UNIX history, and found a talk by Hendrik Jan Thomassen. He's the UNIX pioneer in the Netherlands and has worked with Thompson and Ritchie in the past. He says the real reason why UNIX commands like ls, cp, mv, etc., are short is because PDP11...




					catonmat.net


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## eax.qbyte (Nov 7, 2019)

That's just how students are. That happens when their creation and naughtiness mix together.


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## aragats (Nov 7, 2019)

msplsh said:


> Because it's short and it's short for concatenate. That's all there is to it.


I remember this (or similar) video was already posted here. Also explains why `dd`!

[OFFTOPIC] Did you think why "soccer" has appeared as a shortening of "association" by skipping the first letters? ;-)


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## RichardM (Nov 7, 2019)

I always thought it was short for "catenate", perhaps this synonym for "concatenate" was more widely used in the 1970s when UNIX was developed...

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/catenate


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## Hakaba (Nov 8, 2019)

One of my professor say that cat is for concatenation (catenate)
«cat a b c» ensure that EOF exist only at the end.
It is used for printing text because cat was faster than other tools. (more ?)

man cat seems to confirm :
«concatenate and print fileS»


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## xavi (Nov 8, 2019)

An interesting article for those that want to know more about the source history of `cat`.


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