Re: Why doesn't "cat" print content of a file to standard output if the content is only a number ?

[vatbier]

NO, the output of "cat /var/lock/subsys/dm" is written over by the
prompt of my shell (dm has a number like 1114)
  address@hidden home]$ cat /var/lock/subsys/dm
  address@hidden home]$
My system is Mandrake Linux 9.1 with bash v2.05b
Is it possible to change this bash behaviour so that the prompt doesn't
overwrite output of a command?

If I type this:
  address@hidden home]$ echo -n "This is an example of what happens" >me
  address@hidden home]$ cat me
  address@hidden home]$  of what happens
then I have to press Enter to be able to write at my prompt.

Also the reason why I thought this only happened with a number
was that I tested it with text files created by KWrite. I just
found out that (sometimes) if I replace a number with some other
characters KWrite adds a newline character by itself. I then had
the impression that it didn't happen with text characters.

Thank you all for the quick responses,

vatbier