Comment by shorter

I've sometimes heard it's "catenate" not "concatenate".

Do they mean the same thing?

As for cat, the utility, I'm afraid we'll never stop seeing people doing

   cat file|prog1|prog2

even when it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

If it did, I might as well do

   cat file|cat|prog|cat|prog2|cat -

I mean, why not? It "looks nicer" than

   prog file|prog2 or 
   prog < file|prog2

Programmers love their cats.