NAME

FTimesCat - Write the contents of a file or stdin to stdout.

SYNOPSIS

ftimes-cat {file|-} [...]

ftimes-cat {-v|--version}

DESCRIPTION

The FTimesCat utility reads the contents of a file or stdin and writes them to stdout. The specified filename is assumed to be encoded (i.e., neutered by FTimes), and it is automatically decoded to obtain the real name, which may contain special characters. For WINX platforms, the decoded name is assumed to be a UTF-8 string.

MODES OF OPERATION

The modes of operation described in this section are mutually exclusive. In other words, only one mode may be specified per invocation.

{file|-} [...]: Write the contents of a file or stdin to stdout.
{-v|--version}: Display version information and exit.

RETURN VALUES

Upon successful completion, a value of 0 (XER_OK) is returned. Otherwise, one of the following error codes is returned:

1 = XER_Usage
2 = XER_Abort

EXAMPLES

Example 1. Standard operation

This example demonstrates how to cat a file with a neutered name. In this case, the name contains space and newline characters.

    ftimes-cat name+with+spaces%0aand%0anewlines

Such a file can be created with the following Perl one-liner:

    perl -e 'open(F, ">name with spaces\nand\nnewlines"); print F "jinx\n";'

Example 2. Standard operation with input from stdin

This example demonstrates how to copy stdin to a file called 'out.zero'. The data for stdin will be generated by the dd(1) command reading from /dev/zero.

    dd if=/dev/zero bs=32k count=1 | ftimes-cat - > out.zero

Example 3. Files with alternate data streams

This example demonstrates how to cat the contents of an alternate data stream called 'ads1'.

    ftimes-cat some-file-with-a-stream:ads1

If you believe a file contains an alternate data stream, you can use ftimes(1) to determine its name as follows:

    ftimes --mapauto none -l 6 some-file-with-a-stream

Note that alternate data streams are specific to WINX platforms and NTFS.

AUTHOR

Klayton Monroe

HISTORY

This utility was initially written to obtain the content of files with awkward or mischievous names (i.e., names requiring special handling to prevent terminal rendering issues and errors in various tools and shell scripts).

This utility first appeared in FTimes 3.9.0.