Example
This is useful to see if there are any non-printable characters, or non-ASCII characters.
e.g. If you have copy-pasted the code from web, you may have quotes like ” instead of standard ".
$ cat -v file.txt
$ cat -vE file.txt # Useful in detecting trailing spaces.
e.g.
$ echo '” ' | cat -vE # echo | will be replaced by actual file.
M-bM-^@M-^] $
You may also want to use cat -A (A for All) that is equivalent to cat -vET.
It will display TAB characters (displayed as ^I), non printable characters and end of each line:
$ echo '” `' | cat -A
M-bM-^@M-^]^I`$
