The copy of the man pages I have for cat (GNU coreutils 6.9.92.4-f088d-dirt January 2008) says this: "-v, --show-nonprinting
" use ^ and M- notation, except for LFD and TAB;"
it doesn't strip control characters, but maps them to a different form. The FreeBSD entry for cat has a similar, but not identical description for the -v option.

Information about American English usage here and here. Floating point issues? Please read this before posting. — emc

In reply to Re^3: Wanted: humanly readable `script` output by swampyankee
in thread Wanted: humanly readable `script` output by mrslopenk

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