[ccannon]

I always wondered where the name cat came from which the article doesn’t address. Any ideas?

[drivers99]

It's short for conCATenate.

original man page: http://man.cat-v.org/unix-1st/1/cat

[rbobby]

And that was because it's function was/is to concatenate files:

cat f1 f2 f3 >f4

[ccannon]

Ah now I understand!

[Isamu]

Actually catinate, which is a real word but less used. But you are still right.

[LukeShu]

In the earliest references, it was "concatenate". It wasn't until 7th edition UNIX (1979) that "catenate" was given.

References:

- 1971 draft (pre 1st edition) of the paper that would become the well-known 1974 CACM UNIX paper (earliest documentation on `cat` that I can find): https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/McIlroy_... (tune in on page 28)

- 6th edition cat(1) man page (1975): http://man.cat-v.org/unix-6th/1/cat

- 7th edition cat(1) man page (1979): http://man.cat-v.org/unix_7th/1/cat

[swoopitypoop]

Latin root word "catena", meaning "chain".

[loeg]

Latin root "con-" ("com-") meaning "with," or "together." As in, "concatenate" means something like, "chain together."

https://www.etymonline.com/word/com-

https://www.etymonline.com/word/concatenate