An existing file in the PWD isn't displayed with "cat"..

linuxharsha · 02-17-2004, 03:08 AM

Hi ,

This is some thing very strange. A file which is displayed with ls command isn't being displayed with the cat command. Even the editor vi couldn't open. It opened a new file with the same name.

#ls
man tt bb
ll voo file1

#cat voo
cat: voo: No such file or directory

I made sure that I was in the same dir.

My Hardware : HP Proliant ML350
My Distro : Red Hat 7.3

What could be the reason?

Regards,
Harsha.

Lazarus · 02-17-2004, 06:24 AM

try
ls -l voo
That will tell you what sort of file it is. It may for example be zero bytes long

SylvainP · 02-17-2004, 07:11 AM

I don't know if that's possible in Linux, but in that other OS such a thing would happen if there were unprintable characters in the filename. Try cat *voo*, or cat *v*, or opening it with you favorite file manager.