Classic Shell Scripting

Text Manipulation

The following commands are used for text manipulation:

awk	An elegant and useful programming language in its own right, it is also an important component of many large shell scripts.
cat	Concatenate files.
cmp	Simple file comparison program.
cut	Cut out selected columns or fields.
dd	A more specialized program for blocking and unblocking data, and converting between ASCII and EBCDIC. dd is especially good for making raw copies of device files. Note that iconv is a better program for doing character set conversions.
echo	Print arguments to standard output.
egrep	Extended grep. Matching uses Extended Regular Expressions (EREs).
expand	Expand tabs to spaces.
fgrep	Fast grep. This program uses a different algorithm than grep for matching fixed strings. Most, but not all, Unix systems can search simultaneously for multiple fixed strings.
fmt	Simple tool for formatting text into paragraphs.
grep	From the original ed line editor's command g/ re /p, "Globally match RE and Print." Matching uses Basic Regular Expressions (BREs).
iconv	General-purpose character-encoding conversion tool.
join	Join matching records from multiple files.
less	A sophisticated interactive pager program for looking at information on a terminal, one screenful (or "page") at a time. It is now available from the GNU Project. The name is a pun on the more program.
more	The original BSD Unix interactive pager program.
pr	Format files for printing on line printers.
printf ...