That is a useless use of cat. And so long as that's all you want to do, you're better off using grep(1) for this. grep '^[[:alpha:]]' gcc-295.pkg If for some reason you need to do it with Perl, I propose the -n variant already mentioned, perl -ne'print if /^[[:alpha:]]/' gcc-295.pkg as it's both easier to read and remember as well as slightly more efficient than -p in this case.

Makeshifts last the longest.