...
- cat outputs all the contents of its input (one or more files and/or standard input) or the specified file
- CAUTION – only use on small files!
- zcat <file.gz> like cat, but understands the gzip (.gz) format, and decompresses the data before writing it to standard output
- CAUTION – only use on small files!
- Another CAUTION – does not understand .zip or .bz2 compression formats
- more and less "pagers"
- both display their (possibly very long) input one Terminal "page" at a time
- in more:
- use spacebar to advance a page
- use q or Ctrl-c to exit more
- in less:
- q – quit
- Ctrl-f or space – page forward
- Ctrl-b – page backward
- /<pattern> – search for <pattern> in forward direction
- n – next match
- N – previous match
- ?<pattern> – search for <pattern> in backward direction
- n – previous match going back
- N – next match going forward
- use less -N to display line numbers
- can be used directly on .gz files
- head and tail
- show you the top or bottom 10 lines (by default) of their input
- head -20 show the top 20 lines
- tail -2 shows the last 2 lines
- tail -n +100 shows lines starting at line 100
- tail -f shows the last lines of a file, then follows the output as more lines are written (Ctrl-c to quit)
- gunzip -c <file.gz> | more (or less) – like zcat, uncompresses un-compresses lines of <file.gz> and outputs them to standard output
- <file.gz> is not altered on disk
- always pipe the output to a pager!
...