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Development Tools Git Basics Getting Started With Git Looking Back on What We've Done

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,236 Points

Assuming you're talking about Unix/Linux/Cygwin/etc, it's short for "concatentate", and it's a tool that takes a list of files and combines them into one file. The output is directed to the "standard output" which means it displays it on the screen unless you direct it otherwise.

This makes it a handy and commonly used way to display the contents of a file on the screen.