Concept: Reading Files

Skill: reading-files

Unix systems explain themselves through files.

Use cat for short plain output, bat for highlighted interactive reading, less for longer files, head for the beginning, and tail for the end.

bat is often a better human reader than both cat and less, but it is not as portable. cat and less are the true standards on Unix-like systems.

If a file floods your screen, use a better reading command next time.

Go Deeper

• File explains file content and metadata.
• File Encoding explains why bytes need an encoding before they become text.
• I/O explains input and output streams.