Implementing cat

In this assignment, you will write a program that can concatenate and print files.

What to do?

• Write a C program mycat whose behavior resembles that of the system command cat. Unlike the standard cat, mycat will not work with the standard input. mycat must accept the following parameters:

~$ mycat [-bens] file1 [file2 ...]

• mycat must receive at least one parameter, file1, whose content will be printed on the screen. If more than one file name is specified, the contents of all of the files will be printed.
• mycat must accept any combination of the following switches:
  • -b Number the non-blank output lines, starting at 1.
  • -e Display a dollar sign ('$') at the end of each line.
  • -n Number the output lines, starting at 1.
  • -s Squeeze (remove) all empty lines, causing the output to be single spaced. An empty line can contain one or more whitespace characters (e.g. space, tab, newline, carriage return).

• Test mycat using the following text files: file1.txt, file2.txt, and file3.txt (these files can be found on Blackboard with the assignment). Use the following test cases:

~$ mycat file1.txt

~$ mycat file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt

~$ mycat -n file1.txt file2.txt

~$ mycat -b file1.txt file2.txt

~$ mycat -bn file1.txt file2.txt

~$ mycat -e file1.txt file2.txt

~$ mycat -be file1.txt file2.txt

~$ mycat -es file1.txt file2.txt

~$ mycat -ens file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt