The Linux Command Line

Chapter 20. Text Processing

All Unix-like operating systems rely heavily on text files for several types of data storage. So it makes sense that there are many tools for manipulating text. In this chapter, we will look at programs that are used to “slice and dice” text. In the next chapter, we will look at more text processing, focusing on programs that are used to format text for printing and other kinds of human consumption.

This chapter will revisit some old friends and introduce us to some new ones:

• cat—Concatenate files and print on the standard output.

• sort—Sort lines of text files.

• uniq—Report or omit repeated lines.

• cut—Remove sections from each line of files.

• paste—Merge lines of files.

• join—Join lines of two files on a common field.

• comm—Compare ...