Displaying File Contents (more, cat)

Use the more command to display the contents of a file. Type more and follow it with the name of the file to be displayed. The contents of the file scroll down the screen. If the file is longer than one screen, this message appears:

--More--(nn%)

where nn is the percentage of the file already displayed.

You can also use the cat command to display the contents of a file, but it displays the file contents rapidly without pausing. The cat (concatenate) command is more often used to join two or more files into one large file, as in this example:

$ cat file1 file2 file3 > bigfile
$ ls *file
bigfile
file1
file2
file3
$

For further information on the more(1) or cat(1) commands, refer to the man Pages(1): User Commands.