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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers How to modify the cat command to highlight a chosen word? Post 302974840 by bakunin on Saturday 4th of June 2016 02:39:37 PM
Old 06-04-2016
Quote:
Originally Posted by IndigoFox
Is it possible to modify the cat command (using a linux virtual machine) so that it displays text of a file and highlights a specifically chosen word?
Despite RudiC has already come up with some rather elaborate workarounds: the short answer is you can't. The reason is (as RudiC also mentioned) that cat is intended for a different purpose.

Your questions amounts to "can i modify a hammer so that it drills holes". Yes, maybe, somehow, but why not use a drilling machine instead, which will be better suited for that from the start?

You can use sed as mentioned to decorate certain words or phrases with highlighting code, but that is quirky at best and certainly not very portable (chances are it won't work in the same way on another system). If you just want to search for something and want to have it easier to see the found pieces use the grep facility. In your Linuy system the grep has a --color option which should do what you want. If memory serves right this is even on by default. Otherwise cosult the man page of it.

Moderator's Comments:
Mod Comment And, by the way: please do NOT post in the "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions" forum if you are not doing exactly that - write an essay about some frequently asked question. I have moved your thread to a more fitting forum. Thanks for your consideration.


I hope this helps.

bakunin
 

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BZEXE(1)						      General Commands Manual							  BZEXE(1)

NAME
bzexe - compress executable files in place SYNOPSIS
bzexe [ name ... ] DESCRIPTION
The bzexe utility allows you to compress executables in place and have them automatically uncompress and execute when you run them (at a penalty in performance). For example if you execute ``bzexe /bin/cat'' it will create the following two files: -r-xr-xr-x 1 root bin 9644 Feb 11 11:16 /bin/cat -r-xr-xr-x 1 bin bin 24576 Nov 23 13:21 /bin/cat~ /bin/cat~ is the original file and /bin/cat is the self-uncompressing executable file. You can remove /bin/cat~ once you are sure that /bin/cat works properly. This utility is most useful on systems with very small disks. OPTIONS
-d Decompress the given executables instead of compressing them. SEE ALSO
bzip2(1), znew(1), zmore(1), zcmp(1), zforce(1) CAVEATS
The compressed executable is a shell script. This may create some security holes. In particular, the compressed executable relies on the PATH environment variable to find gzip and some other utilities (tail, chmod, ln, sleep). BUGS
bzexe attempts to retain the original file attributes on the compressed executable, but you may have to fix them manually in some cases, using chmod or chown. BZEXE(1)
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