11 lines
1.2 KiB
HTML
11 lines
1.2 KiB
HTML
title: kato
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date: 2026-06-29 20:47
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---
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<p>When workin on the terminal, I've ended up preferring to take advantage of the terminal scrollback where reasonable.
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As such, I've moved to using cat(1) instead of less(1) for when I want to read a text file.</p>
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<p>There are some downsides to using cat(1), though.
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First of all, you're allowing the author of a file to send <a href="https://arcan-fe.com/2025/01/27/sunsetting-cursed-terminal-emulation/#:~:text=These%20are%20downplayed%20as%20%E2%80%98just%20text%E2%80%99%20but%20everything%20that%20touches%20American%20Standard%20Code%20for%20Information%20Interchange%20are%20raw%20instructions%20for%20this%20machine%2E">arbitrary instructions</a> to your terminal.
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This turns out to be <a href="https://dgl.cx/2023/09/ansi-terminal-security">suboptimal</a> for security.
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Secondly, there is no way to tell where one file ends and another starts.
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This is what you want when you are using it to con<i>cat</i>enate several files together, but it is annoying if you want to quickly look through a directory full of many small files.</p>
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<p>I wrote <a href="https://ahti.space/git/nortti/kato">a small tool called kato</a> to solve these problems for me.</p>
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