Timeline for How can I display the contents of a text file on the command line?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 30 at 20:20 | comment | added | Seamus |
+1 for printf "%s" "$(<filename)"... it may not be needed (may not even work) for zsh, but I am not a frequent zsh user.
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| Jun 30 at 20:18 | history | edited | Seamus | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
improve *accuracy* of answer
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| Jul 3, 2023 at 6:32 | comment | added | user167612 | Be very careful with <filename. A simple mistake of writing >filename instead can destroy your file! | |
| Jul 3, 2023 at 6:28 | comment | added | Stéphane Chazelas |
@jarno, < filename works in zsh where it does $READNULLCMD < filename, $READNULLCMD being a pager by default.
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| Jul 3, 2023 at 6:26 | comment | added | Stéphane Chazelas |
cat's primarily use is to concatenate, but among all the commands that can dump the contents of a file, it's one of the rare ones that doesn't modify it in the process. Your $(...) removes trailing newline characters, in bash removes the NULs, echo does further modifications if there are backslashes or it starts with -. In bash, that still forks a process and the contents has to be fed through a pipe and stored whole several times in memory. Really not an improvement over cat file.
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| Dec 11, 2022 at 12:01 | comment | added | EsmaeelE |
Fun fact: use echo without double quote echo $(<filename) print files without new lines. write file contents in one line on standard output.
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| Sep 24, 2022 at 19:21 | comment | added | t7e |
I've tested, < filename only works on zsh and not on GNU bash version 5.1.16(1)-release.
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| Aug 22, 2022 at 11:36 | comment | added | pmor |
@jarno Why bare < filename does not display contents of the file?
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| Sep 25, 2018 at 5:52 | comment | added | Saman Bayat |
That's great idea for using Linux Internal Command with echo "$(<filename)". Thanks ...
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| Jan 11, 2018 at 8:13 | comment | added | Yokai |
+1 for the echo "$(<filename)" bashism. Not enough of that here.
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| Jan 2, 2018 at 12:07 | history | edited | Jeff Schaller♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
missing apostrophe
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| Jun 21, 2017 at 20:42 | comment | added | jarno |
You could use tee < filename, too.
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| Jun 21, 2017 at 19:57 | comment | added | jarno |
Bare < filename does not display contents of the file, but cat filename does.
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| Sep 29, 2015 at 20:21 | comment | added | X Tian |
Your update: "< filename is exactly what you want, ..." is misleading. Overall, although this is an interesting discussion on alternatives, I think cat is simpler.
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| Sep 29, 2015 at 19:17 | review | Late answers | |||
| Sep 29, 2015 at 20:21 | |||||
| Apr 20, 2015 at 8:14 | history | edited | crunsher | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 89 characters in body
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| Apr 10, 2015 at 13:39 | review | First posts | |||
| Apr 10, 2015 at 13:41 | |||||
| Apr 10, 2015 at 13:35 | history | answered | crunsher | CC BY-SA 3.0 |