View Text File in Linux Terminal
You can view a text file in a Linux terminal using a few simple commands. The most common commands are cat, less, more, and head or tail. Each command has a specific use case.
Using cat
The cat command, short for “concatenate,” displays the entire content of a file directly to the terminal screen. This is best for small files.
To use it, type cat followed by the filename:
cat filename.txt
For example, to view a file named my_notes.txt, you would use:
cat my_notes.txt
Using less
The less command is a powerful pager, which means it displays a file page by page. This is the recommended command for viewing large files because it doesn’t load the entire file into memory at once.
To use it, type less followed by the filename:
less filename.txt
Once the file is open, you can navigate using these keys:
- Up/Down arrows or j/k: Scroll one line at a time.
- Spacebar or Page Down: Scroll down one page.
- b or Page Up: Scroll up one page.
- /: Search forward for a specific word.
- q: Quit and return to the terminal prompt.
Using more
The more command is similar to less but with fewer features. It’s an older pager that also displays a file one page at a time.
To use it, type more followed by the filename:
more filename.txt
You can use the Spacebar to move to the next page and q to quit.
Using head and tail
The head and tail commands are useful for viewing only the beginning or end of a file, respectively. They both show the first or last 10 lines by default.
To view the first 10 lines of a file, use head:
head filename.txt
To view the last 10 lines of a file, use tail:
tail filename.txt
You can specify a different number of lines using the -n option:
head -n 5 filename.txt(shows the first 5 lines)tail -n 20 filename.txt(shows the last 20 lines)