Instead of `cat`, I use `bat`, "a cat(1) clone with wings." https://github.com/sharkdp/bat

It supports syntax highlighting, line numbers, git, invisible chars etc. I even have it aliased to `cat`.

But if you'd like to concat multiple files into a single file like `cat 1 2 3 > foo`, you should run the original unaliased `cat` (by prefixing it with `\`, like `\cat`), seems much faster, at least in my case up to 10x. So now my scripts contain `\cat` instead of just `cat`.