It is short for concatenate, which is to join things together. You can give it multiple inputs and it will output each one directly following the previous. It so happens to also work with just one input.

[–] kautau@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

That’s why we have bat now

https://github.com/sharkdp/bat

[–] 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 50 points 8 months ago (2 children)

To bonbatenate files?

[–] kautau@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago

Exactly

[–] DrWeevilJammer@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Bat bat bo-at

Bonbaten-fana fo-fat

Fee-fi-fo-fat

Bat!

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 1 points 8 months ago

Cat with wings? Isn’t a bat more like a rat with wings?

[–] Mad_Punda@feddit.de 2 points 8 months ago

TIL

I never realized. Thanks!

[–] ulterno@lemmy.kde.social 28 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It is to use along with split. e.g.

You take a single large file, say 16GB
Use split to break it into multiple files of 4GB
Now you can transfer it to a FAT32 Removable Flash Drive and transfer it to whatever other computer that doesn't have Ethernet.
Here, you can use cat to combine all files into the original file. (preferably accompanied by a checksum)

[–] Tangent5280@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Doesnt computers do this automatically if you try to copy over a file larger than its per file size limit?

[–] Octopus1348@lemy.lol 9 points 8 months ago

No. It just gives an error that it's too big.