I would like to display the contents of a text file on the command line. The file only contains 5-6 characters. Is there an easy way to do this? Jeff Schaller♦ 64.7k34 gold badges106 silver badges239 bronze badges
asked Aug 11, 2013 at 3:41 Sam
WeinbergSam Weinberg 2,7232 gold badges12 silver badges5 bronze badges 1 Using catSince your file is short, you can use cat. cat filename
Using lessIf you have to view the contents of a longer file, you can use a pager such as less. less filename
You can make less behave like cat when
invoked on small files and behave normally otherwise by passing it the -F and -X flags. less -FX filename
I have an alias for less -FX. You can make one yourself like so: alias aliasname='less -FX'
If you add the alias to your shell configuration, you can use it forever. Using odIf your file contains strange or unprintable characters, you can use
od to examine the characters. For example, $ cat file
(ÐZ4 ?o=÷jï
$ od -c test
0000000 202 233 ( 320 K j 357 024 J 017 h Z 4 240 ? o
0000020 = 367 \n
0000023
answered Aug 11, 2013 at 4:03 6 Even though everybody uses cat filename to print a files text to the standard output first purpose is concatenating. From cat's man page: cat - concatenate files and print on the standard output
Now cat is fine for printing files but there are alternatives: echo "$(<filename)"
or
printf "%s" "$(<filename)"
The ( ) return the value of an expression, in this case the content of filename which then is
expanded by $ for echo or printf. Update: < filename
This does exactly what you want and is easy to remember. Here is an example that lets you select a file in a menu and then prints it. #!/bin/bash
select fname in *;
do
# Don't forget the "" around the second part, else newlines won't be printed
printf "%s" "$(<$fname)"
break
done
For further reading:
BashPitfalls - cat file | sed s/foo/bar/ > file
Bash Reference - Redirecting Jeff Schaller♦ 64.7k34 gold badges106 silver badges239 bronze badges answered Apr 10, 2015 at 13:35 crunshercrunsher 7245 silver badges5 bronze badges
7 Tools for handling text files on unix are basic, everyday-commands: In unix and linux to print out whole content in file cat filename.txt
or more filename.txt
or less filename.txt
For last few lines tail filename.txt
For first few lines head filename.txt
answered Aug 11, 2013 at 16:55
AbhishekAbhishek 2911 silver badge4 bronze badges You can use following command to display content of a text file. cat filename
answered Aug 11, 2013 at 3:44 forvaidyaforvaidya 2011 silver badge5 bronze badges 1 One option is to use more e.g. more file.txt However it does not have all the feature added by less.
One simple example is that you can't scroll back up in the output. Generally it has been superceeded by less - which was named in jest because less is more
answered Apr 20, 2015 at
11:17 Michael DurrantMichael
Durrant 39.5k68 gold badges155 silver badges229 bronze badges 1
I always use $ less "your file here" , as it is very simple, provides a built in interactive grep command, and gives you an easy to use interface that you can scroll with the arrow keys. (It is also included on nearly every *nix system) answered Aug 11, 2013 at 14:48 SG60SG60 412 bronze badges 6
If its a large file, and you want to search some specific part, you can use cat filename | grep text_to_search -ni
Also you can use more interactive Vim editor (or vi editor if you do not have Vim): vim filename
Or
vi filename
Vim/vi is a great editor,
can also be used as a reader in "Normal Mode" or using -R option, it has many features that will help you in browsing through the file. answered Aug 12, 2013 at 10:43 2 Use cat command to display the content of filename. cat filename Use vim command to edit file. vim filename answered Aug
15, 2013 at 2:04 Edward ShenEdward Shen 8484 silver badges8 bronze badges
Which command should you use to display the content of a file less?
Crack open a terminal window and navigate to a directory containing one or more text files that you want to view. Then run the command less filename , where filename is the name of the file you want to view.
Which of the following commands is used to display the contents of a file called example TXT?
Use the command line to navigate to the Desktop, and then type cat myFile. txt . This will print the contents of the file to your command line. This is the same idea as using the GUI to double-click on the text file to see its contents.
What command can be used to display the last five lines of a text file?
To look at the last few lines of a file, use the tail command. tail works the same way as head: type tail and the filename to see the last 10 lines of that file, or type tail -number filename to see the last number lines of the file. Try using tail to look at the last five lines of your .
Which of the following Linux command is used to display a file page by page on the screen?
The cat command is the simplest way to view the contents of a file. It displays the contents of the file(s) specified on to the output terminal. Sometimes, we might want to number the lines in the output.
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