Linux Text and File Operations Cheat Sheet

Linux Text and File Operations•Permalink

Core Linux commands for viewing files, comparing content, touching, truncating, splitting, and combining files.

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`D` dense toggle · `C` copy all

Viewing Files

Print file content

Output a file to standard output.

bashANYcatview

↗#

bash

cat /etc/hosts

Open file with pager

Scroll through a file interactively.

bashANYlessviewpager

↗#

bash

less /var/log/syslog

Show first 20 lines

Preview top of file.

bashANYheadview

↗#

bash

head -20 app.log

Follow appended log lines

Watch file growth in real time.

bashANYtaillogsfollow

↗#

bash

tail -f /var/log/nginx/access.log

Create, touch, truncate

Create empty file or update timestamp

Touch a file path.

bashANYtouchtimestamps

↗#

bash

touch notes.txt

Empty a file without deleting it

Reset file length to zero bytes.

bashANYtruncatelogs

↗#

bash

truncate -s 0 app.log

Write output to file and stdout

Save command output while still printing it.

bashANYteeoutput

↗#

bash

echo 'hello' | tee hello.txt

Compare and Combine

Show unified diff

Compare two files in patch-friendly format.

bashANYdiffcompare

↗#

bash

diff -u old.conf new.conf

Compare files byte-by-byte

Find first differing byte.

bashANYcmpcomparebinary

↗#

bash

cmp file1.bin file2.bin

Compare sorted line sets

Show common and unique lines between two sorted files.

bashANYcommcomparelines

↗#

bash

comm file1.sorted file2.sorted

Concatenate multiple files

Combine files into one output file.

bashANYcatcombine

↗#

bash

cat part1.txt part2.txt > combined.txt

Split and Verify

Split file into chunks

Split a large file into 100 MB parts.

bashANYsplitlarge-files

↗#

bash

split -b 100M archive.tar.gz archive.part.

Split file by pattern

Split a file at regex boundaries.

bashANYcsplitsplittext

↗#

bash

csplit -f section- doc.txt '/^# /' '{*}'

Create SHA256 checksum

Compute a checksum for integrity verification.

bashANYsha256sumchecksum

↗#

bash

sha256sum file.iso > file.iso.sha256

Verify SHA256 checksum

Check file contents against checksum list.

bashANYsha256sumverify

↗#

bash

sha256sum -c file.iso.sha256

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