Like that of .txt or .html
9 Answers
easiest are cat
, head
, tail
, tac
(for reverse output)
less
and more
let you scroll the text files (less
being more powerful)
you can also use text editors like nano
, pico
, vi
, emacs
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1
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1For novice users, it really isn't funny. Glib, and annoying. Commented Jun 19, 2018 at 4:49
you can use cat
, although its really meant for concatenation of files. more
or less
are 2 other tools you can use. Other's include awk, eg
using awk
$ awk '1' file
using sed
$ sed -n '1,$p' file
using grep
$ grep "." file
using head/tail to display some parts of the file
$ head -1000 file
$ tail -1000 file
Tools aside, you can also use just the shell to display your file
#!/bin/bash
while read -r line
do
echo "$line"
done <"file"
For viewing HTML files you can also use lynx
, links
, elinks
or w3m
which are text-mode browsers. They can also be used to view .txt files.
file : Display the type of file cat : Display the content of the file and outputs it on stdout.
You can use vi, emacs command to edit the file in Unix environment. If you do not have expertise in using vi/emacs you might find it little difficult to edit the file.
If you have X11 enabled, You can use a number of Linux editors like gvim, kate, kwrite, kdevelop etc.
Kwrite is my personal favorite in Linux.
cat
Works fine with txt or html. (or less or more if you want tosee it page by page) or any text ediotr... (vi, emcas, gedit...).
Also know that if it's a binary file it's may contain control char that will do some displeasing things with your terminal (like changing charset). If that happen use reset
to put it back in sane state.
You can also use file
on file before displaying it's content, the system will guess it's type (based on content not filename name) and show it to you.