Revisions to What is produced after using cat on an image?

needless info; grammar fix

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edited Jan 13, 2013 at 7:30

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I've been messing around with a virtualized version of natty on my iMac, and I'm a total n00b. I'd just like to preface this question with that, just in case anyone is wondering.

Let's say one creates a file like so:

touch myFile

You enter some text in it with vim or whatever, and then use cat myFile to spit the contents out into the terminal.

Now, what happens when I use cat on any image? Say,

cat myPNG.png

I just get a bunch of garbage. It just made me think about what the cat command is attempting to do. And, and where all of this "garbage" comes from. Just curious.

I've been messing around with a virtualized version of natty on my iMac, and I'm a total n00b. I'd just like to preface this question with that, just in case anyone is wondering.

Let's say one creates a file like so:

touch myFile

You enter some text in it with vim or whatever, and then use cat myFile to spit the contents out into the terminal.

Now, what happens when I use cat on any image? Say,

cat myPNG.png

I just get a bunch of garbage. It just made me think about what the cat command is attempting to do. And where all of this "garbage" comes from. Just curious.

Let's say one creates a file like so:

touch myFile

You enter some text in it with vim or whatever, and then use cat myFile to spit the contents out into the terminal.

Now, what happens when I use cat on any image? Say,

cat myPNG.png

I just get a bunch of garbage. It just made me think about what the cat command is attempting to do, and where all of this "garbage" comes from. Just curious.

deleted 11 characters in body; edited tags

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edited Jul 22, 2011 at 8:39

Caleb

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I've been messing around with a virtualized version of natty on my iMac, and I'm a total n00b. I'd just like to preface this question with that, just in case anyone is wondering.

Let's say one creates a file like so:

touch myFile

You enter some text in it with vim or whatever, and then use cat myFile to spit the contents out into the terminal.

Now, what happens when I use cat on any image? Say,

cat myPNG.png

I just get a bunch of garbage. It just made me think about what the cat command is attempting to do. And where all of this "garbage" comes from. Just curious.

Thanks!

I've been messing around with a virtualized version of natty on my iMac, and I'm a total n00b. I'd just like to preface this question with that, just in case anyone is wondering.

Let's say one creates a file like so:

touch myFile

You enter some text in it with vim or whatever, and then use cat myFile to spit the contents out into the terminal.

Now, what happens when I use cat on any image? Say,

cat myPNG.png

I just get a bunch of garbage. It just made me think about what the cat command is attempting to do. And where all of this "garbage" comes from. Just curious.

Thanks!

I've been messing around with a virtualized version of natty on my iMac, and I'm a total n00b. I'd just like to preface this question with that, just in case anyone is wondering.

Let's say one creates a file like so:

touch myFile

You enter some text in it with vim or whatever, and then use cat myFile to spit the contents out into the terminal.

Now, what happens when I use cat on any image? Say,

cat myPNG.png

I just get a bunch of garbage. It just made me think about what the cat command is attempting to do. And where all of this "garbage" comes from. Just curious.