Unable to display correctly the contents of a file without a line feed

I am using AIX and ksh.
I need to display the contents of a file that has a pid (process id). Because the file is open, it doesn't have the line feed or new line, so for some reason if I do this:
`cat $pid` , where $pid is the name of the fully qualified file, it displays
test3.sh[12]: 426110: not found

It should display:
426110

I tried to copy the file and then try to run vi through the scripts; and edit it; and save it so that a /n will be added at the end (assuming that that is the problem). The file only has one line which is the number of the process id.
It seems simple, but no luck. Any suggestions please....? thank you

It would help to see your whole script. It appears that line 12 of the script test3.sh consists of the line: `cat $pid`

Is that correct?

Also, just running `cat $pid` as a command does not look valid.

Usually that is done to set an environment varilable, thus I tried something similar in Solaris with ksh:

export rp=rpatches
`cat $rp`
ksh: 1): not found

versus

cat $rp
1) Patch 4157095 applied on Fri Apr...

OR

export catrp=`cat $rp`
echo $catrp
1) Patch 4157095 applied on Fri ...

So in your example:

catPid=`cat $pid`

Then you would manipulate $catPid with commands like:

echo ${catPid}
although that seems a bit redundant...

Anyway, the first 11 lines (and the rest) might seem to have a bearing on the issue, but hard to tell without seeing them. Maybe it will be clearer if you show the whole script.

HTH,
rokky