Manipulating Text in Linux Head, Tail, Cat, Split

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In this video, Shawn Powers covers manipulating text in a Linux console window. When looking to display, edit, or manipulate text in a Linux console window, or a terminal window, you've got a few commands available. Watch as Shawn explains then demonstrates Cat, Head, Tail, and Split.

The tools available for manipulating text within a Linux console aren't always perfectly understood — even if you know how to use it, not every sysadmin knows why or how they're useful. There's Cat — short for concatenate, Head, Tail, and Split. If you type Head and a file name, you'll receive the first few lines of that file. Tail, meanwhile, outputs the last few lines of a file. Tail is particularly useful when you have a log file that keeps writing things to the end — like an apache log file, for example. The Tail command can give you the most recent events in a log file. Concatenating files means combining their contents into one file, which is what Cat does with multiple files, and Split does the reverse. Watch Shawn explain how each function works, but more importantly, what a sysadmin can do with them.

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