Difference between cat and sudo cat?

Question

Can you tell me what the difference is between cat and sudo cat?

All I know so far is that cat is used for displaying contents of file and concatenation.

Solution 1

For a little humour I would say that cat is an animal and sudo cat is a feline with superpowers. :D

sudo is a command that you use to obtain root privileges. root is a special user that manages the machine, and for this he/she has superpowers. For example, if there is a file that only root can see its contents, and you are logged in as a normal user, you can use

$ sudo cat name_of_the_file

to read it. Also if there is a program that only root can run, like the reboot command:

$ reboot
warning: must be root!
$ sudo reboot
rebooting...........

THE CATCH IS: you must be specially (and manually) assigned by root to have permission to use sudo. The permission is given in a file called /etc/sudoers. In Ubuntu, the first user, the one created during install, is automatically a sudoer. But the subsequent users are not. You have to add them manually to the group sudo whose members are allowed to use the command sudo.

By the way, /etc/sudoers is a file that only root can see. So if you do

$ cat /etc/sudoers

you will not be able to see its contents. But if you do:

$ sudo cat /etc/sudoers

you are good.

Hope this helps.

Solution 2

Cat is a standard unix utiliy and a most frequently used command which concatenate files and print on the standard output.

You may open a terminal (press CTRL+ATL+T) & type man cat to know more about the command and its usage.

Further, the difference between cat & using sudo cat;

• cat - Frequently & the standard command in use to print an output
• sudo cat - Which prints an output with root privilege. This is mostly needed when a file doesn't have read access for certain user/users but not limited to root user.

Example;

-rw------- 2 root root 4096 996 Feb  6 20:39 log.txt

Above seen is a file which only a root user (or a user who's within root group) can read/write. In such situation you will need to use sudo cat filename to print the output.

Assume it helped you to understand more.!

Solution 3

cat is used to read a file; sudo is used for super user privileges. So sudo cat means read the file with super user (that is, root) privileges.

Comments

[Qasim]

cat is used to read file, sudo is use for super user privileges. so sudo cat mean read the file with super user ( that is root ) privileges.

[Naseer]

Thanx that helped.

[AzkerM]

+1 for explaining cat with an impressive ways. Indeed an amazingly constructed answer. :)

[Emmet]

Surely sudo cat is something masquerading as a cat? :oP

[tobyink]

I can't believe nobody has yet posted a link to xkcd.com/149

[Paddy Landau]

Note for all newcomers: Do not directly edit /etc/sudoers. Any changes to this file must be made via visudo. You can grant administrator privilege to users from the System Settings > User Accounts; no need to manually edit /etc/sudoers.

[Henrique]

Will I go to jail for editing /etc/sudoers directly? I really loathe visudo (as I despise vi/vim in general). Didn't know about the sudo group, though, thanks.

[curusarn]

@Henrique The point is you can get locked out of sudo if you cause a syntax error in /etc/sudoers and then you can't fix it because you can't use sudo. visudo won't let you save the file if there is a syntax error. Also you can set visudo to editor of your choice with sudo update-alternatives --config editor

[Henrique]

Thanks for the clarification, never knew that. But, still, if you know the guy that owns the root password, you can Always cry for help.

[Henrique]

Just as a personal anecdote, some months after this thread I was locked out of the system for neglecting to use visudo, and I instantly remembered @curusarn 's warning.