https://meski.io/tags/basics/ Recent content in Basics on Artur Meski Hugo en-gb Sat, 19 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://meski.io/posts/reading-and-monitoring-files/ Sat, 19 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://meski.io/posts/reading-and-monitoring-files/ <p>Let&rsquo;s start with something super basic. To print the contents of a file you can use <code>cat</code>:</p> <pre><code>cat file </code></pre> <p>This tool is simple but really powerful when combined (piped) with other commands. However, <code>cat</code> is not very practical if you just want to see the contents of a larger file. In that case you can use <code>less</code>, which also allows you to conveniently browse your file:</p> <ul> <li>press <em>space</em> for <em>page down</em> or <code>b</code> for <em>page up</em>,</li> <li>type <code>/pattern</code> to search for <code>pattern</code> in the file (<code>n</code> jumps to the next occurence, while <code>N</code> jumps to the previous one),</li> <li>press <code>q</code> to quit.</li> </ul> <p>If you need to watch a certain file (typically a log file), you can simply use <code>tail -f</code>:</p>