misc/96191: "cat" can display directory contents
Poul-Henning Kamp
phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Sun Apr 23 09:10:19 UTC 2006
The following reply was made to PR misc/96191; it has been noted by GNATS.
From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk at phk.freebsd.dk>
To: Bjoern Voigt <bjoern at cs.tu-berlin.de>
Cc: freebsd-gnats-submit at FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: misc/96191: "cat" can display directory contents
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2006 11:05:13 +0200
In message <200604230850.k3N8oWre066807 at www.freebsd.org>, Bjoern Voigt writes:
>The FreeBSD's version of "cat" is able to display directory contains:
>
>$ cat /etc
>(garbage)
In UNIX a file is a file is a file.
But also, directories, pipes and devices are files.
And as such cat(1) works on them, as it should.
This is not a bug.
--
Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
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