Difference between cat and echo

[Michael Schwendt]

On 13/04/07, Dan Track wrote:
> Hi
>
> I've been testing something out in cron, I ran the following:
>
> MAILTO: user at example.com
> * * * * * cat % This is a test message
> * * * * * echo % This is a test message
>
> When I get my emails, for the cat command, the subject states: "cat "
> and the body states:
> "This is a test message"
>
> However for the echo command I get "echo " in the subject but the body is empty.
>
> This made me wonder and hence ask you guys, why does cat work in
> outputting the message while echo doesn't?

cat reads the text from standard input. echo doesn't.
If you want echo to output the same text, drop the %.