bug#33774: glitch in cat

[Bernhard Voelker]

tags 33774 notabug
close 33774
stop

On 12/16/18 8:58 PM, Valentin Schild wrote:
> somehow, when using cat to display a file's content, I get output to
> the command line
> The file to output contains
> ^[Z
> like attached file "catbug".
> 
> In terminal I type
> cat catbug

That's the point: the terminal treats some control characters specially,
and therefore does not display them.

Your file contains 3 bytes:
- octal 33,
- a 'Z', and
- octal 12 (=newline):

  od -to1z catbug
  0000000 033 132 012                                                      >.Z.<
  0000003

And cat(1) is exactly writing that to the terminal:

  $ strace -ve write cat catbug
  write(1, "\33Z\n", 3)                   = 3
  +++ exited with 0 +++

As there seems nothing to be wrong in 'cat', I'm marking this as not a bug
in our bug tracker.  Of course, discussion on this may continue, and we may
even re-open this issue if needed.

Have a nice day,
Berny