Linux Desk Reference (2nd Edition)
Introduction
There are a variety of ways to get the contents of a file on screen. Most people seem to agree that less is the most versatile paginator; consequently, you rarely see the others these days. Also included here are a few of the more specialized text display programs (e.g., tac, rev) that come in handy from time to time.
The commands covered in this section are designed to display the contents of an ASCII file, in whole or in part, to the screen. They include
| cat | Send contents of a file to standard output. |
| head | Display the top of a file to standard output. |
| less | Display a file, with scrolling. |
| look | Display lines that begin with a given string. |
| rev | Display lines from last character to first. |
| tac | Display lines in reverse order. |
| tail | Display the bottom of a file to standard output. |