Linux view text file

How to open, create, edit, and view a file in Linux

One thing GNU/Linux does as well as any other operating system is give you the tools you need to create and edit text files. Ask ten Linux users to name their favorite text editor, and you might get ten different answers. On this page, we cover a few of the many text editors available for Linux.

GUI text editors

This section discusses text editing applications for the Linux windowing system, X Windows, more commonly known as X11 or X.

If you are coming from Microsoft Windows, you are no doubt familiar with the classic Windows text editor, Notepad. Linux offers many similar programs, including NEdit, gedit, and geany. Each of these programs are free software, and they each provide roughly the same functionality. It’s up to you to decide which one feels best and has the best interface for you. All three of these programs support syntax highlighting, which helps with editing source code or documents written in a markup language such as HTML or CSS.

NEdit

NEdit, which is short for the Nirvana Editor, is a straightforward text editor that is very similar to Notepad. It uses a Motif-style interface.

The NEdit homepage is located at https://sourceforge.net/projects/nedit/. If you are on a Debian or Ubuntu system, you can install NEdit with the following command:

For more information, see our NEdit information page.

Geany

Geany is a text editor that is a lot like Notepad++ for Windows. It provides a tabbed interface for working with multiple open files at once and has nifty features like displaying line numbers in the margin. It uses the GTK+ interface toolkit.

The Geany homepage is located at http://www.geany.org/. On Debian and Ubuntu systems, you can install Geany by running the command:

Gedit

Gedit is the default text editor of the GNOME desktop environment. It’s a great, text editor that can be used on about any Linux system.

The Gedit homepage is located at https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Gedit. On Debian and Ubuntu systems, Gedit can be installed by running the following command:

Terminal-based text editors

If you are working from the Linux command line interface and you need a text editor, you have many options. Here are some of the most popular:

pico started out as the editor built into the text-based e-mail program pine, and it was eventually packaged as a stand-alone program for editing text files. («pico» is a scientific prefix for very small things.)

The modern version of pine is called alpine, but pico is still called pico. You can find more information about how to use it in our pico command documentation.

On Debian and Ubuntu Linux systems, you can install pico using the command:

nano is the GNU version of pico and is essentially the same program under a different name.

On Debian and Ubuntu Linux systems, nano can be installed with the command:

vim, which stands for «vi improved,» is a text editor used by millions of computing professionals all over the world. Its controls are a little confusing at first, but once you get the hang of them, vim makes executing complex editing tasks fast and easy. For more information, see our in-depth vim guide.

On Debian and Ubuntu Linux systems, vim can be installed using the command:

emacs

emacs is a complex, highly customizable text editor with a built-in interpreter for the Lisp programming language. It is used religiously by some computer programmers, especially those who write computer programs in Lisp dialects such as Scheme. For more information, see our emacs information page.

On Debian and Ubuntu Linux systems, emacs can be installed using the command:

Redirecting command output into a text file

When at the Linux command line, you sometimes want to create or make changes to a text file without actually running a text editor. Here are some commands you might find useful.

Creating an empty file with the touch command

To create an empty file, it’s common to use the command touch. The touch command updates the atime and mtime attributes of a file as if the contents of the file had been changed — without actually changing anything. If you touch a file that doesn’t exist, the system creates the file without putting any data inside.

For instance, the command:

The above command creates a new, empty file called myfile.txt if that file does not already exist.

Redirecting text into a file

Sometimes you need to stick the output of a command into a file. To accomplish this quickly and easily, you can use the > symbol to redirect the output to a file.

For instance, the echo command is used to «echo» text as output. By default, this goes to the standard output — the screen. So the command:

The above command prints that text on your screen and return you to the command prompt. However, you can use > to redirect this output to a file. For instance:

The above command puts the text «Example text» into the file myfile.txt. If myfile.txt does not exist, it is created. If it already exists, its contents will be overwritten, destroying the previous contents and replacing them.

Be careful when redirecting output to a file using >. It will overwrite the previous contents of the file if it already exists. There is no undo for this operation, so make sure you want to completely replace the file’s contents before you run the command.

Here’s an example using another command:

The above command executes ls with the -l option, which gives a detailed list of files in the current directory. The > operator redirects the output to the file directory.txt, instead of printing it to the screen. If directory.txt does not exist, it is created first. If it already exists, its contents will be replaced.

Redirecting to the end of a file

The redirect operator >> is similar to >, but instead of overwriting the file contents, it appends the new data to the end of the file. For instance, the command:

Источник

How to display the contents of a text file on the terminal in Linux/Ubuntu

In this short tutorial, we cover see some simple commands that will help users learn how to open a file in linux or view its contents on the command line.

Using less

This is a pager which is useful to view long files for instance:

For instance the command below will display the content of the file output_report.txt :

Linux view text file

By passing the -F and -X switches, less can behave like cat when applied to small files but will act normally otherwise.

For instance :
less -X new_file

Using cat

applying cat to the same file that we used above, .i.e. :

Linux show file content

Using Echo

The parenthesis ( ) are used to return the value of a given expression which in this case, is the contents of file_name .

Linux display file contents

Using printf

Much like the previous command, the parenthesis ( ) are used to return the value of a given expression which in this case, is the contents of file_name .

Using tail

To display the last few lines

applying tail to the file output_in_html will give the following result :

which displays the last lines of the provided file.

Using head

Used to display the first few lines.

Applying head to the file output_in_html will give the following result :

Using more

The more command enables you to display the contents of text files in a scrollable manner. The text is shown one screenful at a time. You also have the possibility to scroll forwards and backwards through the text. You can even perform a search on the text.

Linux command to display contents of a file

Will show the following :

• Space key : Used to scroll the display, .i.e. one screenful at a time
• Enter key : Used to scroll the display one line
• b key : Used to scroll the display backwards one screenful at a time
• / key : Used to search the a given pattern much like in the vi/vim editor

Conclusion :

You have seen some simple utilities that allow you to display a text file on the command line. For small files, you can use the less command, or the echo command. If you know other similar tools, do not hesitate to write them in the comments section below.

If you like the content, we would appreciate your support by buying us a coffee. Thank you so much for your visit and support.

Источник

5 Commands to View the Content of a File in Linux Command Line

If you are new to Linux and you are confined to a terminal, you might wonder how to view a file in the command line.

Reading a file in Linux terminal is not the same as opening file in Notepad. Since you are in the command line mode, you should use commands to read file in Linux.

Don’t worry. It’s not at all complicated to display a file in Linux. It’s easy as well essential that you learn how to read files in the line.

Here are five commands that let you view the content of a file in Linux terminal.

5 commands to view files in Linux

Before you how to view a file in Unix like systems, let me clarify that when I am referring to text files here. There are different tools and commands if you want to read binary files.

1. Cat

This is the simplest and perhaps the most popular command to view a file in Linux.

Cat simply prints the content of the file to standard display i.e. your screen. It cannot be simpler than this, can it?

cat displays the content of the file on the screen

Cat becomes a powerful command when used with its options. I recommend reading this detailed tutorial on using cat command.

The problem with cat command is that it displays the text on the screen. Imagine if you use cat command with a file that has 2000 lines. Your entire screen will be flooded with the 200 lines and that’s not the ideal situation.

So, what do you do in such a case? Use less command in Linux (explained later).

The nl command is almost like the cat command. The only difference is that it prepends line numbers while displaying the text in the terminal.

nl command displays text with line numbers

There are a few options with nl command that allows you to control the numbering. You can check its man page for more details.

3. Less

Less command views the file one page at a time. The best thing is that you exit less (by pressing q), there are no lines displayed on the screen. Your terminal remains clean and pristine.

I strongly recommend learning a few options of the Less command so that you can use it more effectively.

There is also more command which was used in olden days but less command has more friendly features. This is why you might come across the humorous term ‘less is more’.

4. Head

Head command is another way of viewing text file but with a slight difference. The head command displays the first 10 lines of a text file by default.

You can change this behavior by using options with head command but the fundamental principle remains the same: head command starts operating from the head (beginning) of the file.

5. Tail

Tail command in Linux is similar and yet opposite to the head command. While head command displays file from the beginning, the tail command displays file from the end.

By default, tail command displays the last 10 lines of a file.

Head and Tail commands can be combined to display selected lines from a file. You can also use tail command to see the changes made to a file in real time.

Bonus: Strings command

Okay! I promised to show only the commands for viewing text file. And this one deals with both text and binary files.

Strings command displays the readable text from a binary file.

No, it doesn’t convert binary files into text files. If the binary file consists of actual readable text, strings command displays those text on your screen. You can use the file command to find the type of a file in Linux.

Conclusion

Some Linux users use Vim to view the text file but I think that’s overkill. My favorite command to open a file in Linux is the less command. It leaves the screen clear and has several options that makes viewing text file a lot easier.

Since you now know ways to view files, maybe you would be interested in knowing how to edit text files in Linux. Cut and Paste are two such commands that you can use for editing text in Linux terminal. You may also read about creating files in Linux command line.

Источник