Red Hat NETSCAPE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 6.0 - CUSTOMIZATION User Manual download pdf (Page 274)

262 Managing Files and Directories

And speaking of reading ﬁles...

There are plenty of ways to read ﬁles in Linux. In the previous chapter, for example, we covered

the pagers more and less – they’re called pagers because you can “page” through documents one

screen at a time. We also learned how we can not only view but manipulate ﬁles with the cat

command.

But there are even more options when it comes time to take a look at README ﬁles, man pages or

documents you’ve created.

You have a number of tools to help you read text ﬁles, among them, the text editors pico, emacs,

and vim, the pagers more and less,andtheviewershead, tail, cat,andgrep.

Let’s take a look at some of the features in these tools.

The less Command

In Chapter 16 on page 217, we were introduced to the pager less. Less is the pager that’susedto

display man pages.

Let’sviewthemanpageforless to see less in action.

man less

To move forward a screen, press

Space ; to move back a screen, press B ,andtoquit,press Q .

There are other powerful features to less, as well, including the ability to scroll horizontally and

specify the number of lines to scroll.

The more Command

Odd as it may seem, more offers less than less (actually, less was inspired by more).

Let’s take a look at the man page for more, but this time, we’ll open the page using more – by piping

man’soutputtomore.

man more | more

It may not look too different at ﬁrst, but there are fewer enhancements to more than to less.Proba-

bly the most striking difference at ﬁrst is the lack of a way to go backwards in a document – although

moving forward by pressing

Space and quitting by pressing Q are the same.

The head Command

You can use the head command if you just want to look at the beginning of a ﬁle. The command is:

1 2 ... 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 ... 299 300

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Red Hat NETSCAPE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 6.0 - CUSTOMIZATION User Manual Page 274