There are many GUI text editors available on Linux systems that can be used to view and modify text files. But if you just want to read text file in terminal. Well there are many commands available on Linux that allow you to do this, three of them are less, more and most.
Keep reading to learn how to use these three commands to efficiently read text files on your Linux terminal.
less is a Linux command for filtering and viewing text files, one screen page at a time. It is more advanced than the more and most commands.
Using the less command, you can read very long text files in sections without loading the entire file. It offers many options and interactive features to make your experience more satisfying.
Because the less command outputs the first page of a text file and does not need to read the entire contents of the file, it is faster than other text editors.
less command is:
less [选项] [文件的名称或位置]
In this example, we will use the sudo.conf file. The sudo.conf file is used to configure the sudo front end and has 139 lines. This file is present in almost every Linux-based operating system. You can also use any text file of your choice, as long as it exceeds 60 lines.
The default less command prints out the first page of the file you use. Try using the sudo.conf file by executing the following command in the terminal:
linuxmi@linuxmi /home/linuxmi/www.linuxmi.com ⚡ less /usr/share/doc/sudo/examples/sudo.conf
This will print out the first 53 lines of the document. To move forward one line at a time, press the Down key or the Space key.
To move back one line, press the Up key.
To move forward one page, press B. To move forward a few lines, press B, and then type the number of lines.
To move back one page, press D. To move back a number of rows, type D, and then the number of rows you want to return.
You can also view the number of lines in a file while viewing it. To do this, add the -N option when running the command. Try using the sudo.conf file by executing the following command:
linuxmi@linuxmi /home/linuxmi/www.linuxmi.com ⚡ less -N /usr/share/doc/sudo/examples/sudo.conf
The output is as follows:
You can use the less command to search for words and strings. When it finds a string, it displays the result with highlighting.
Let’s search for the word: plugin. To do this, execute the default less command and when it returns the output, type / and search for the word or string.
If you search for ****plugin****, the output should look like this:
more 命令允许您一次查看一个屏幕页面的终端中的文本文件。此命令的工作方式与 less 命令类似，但功能较少。
more 命令的基本语法为：
more [选项] [文件的名称或位置]
“
more 命令可帮助用户在终端中逐屏查看大型文本文件的各个部分。您可以使用它来显示文本文件和命令输出、在文件中搜索单词等。
对于此示例，我们将使用在 /etc文件夹中找到的sudo.conf文件。要使用 more 命令查看文件，请执行以下命令：
linuxmi@linuxmi /home/linuxmi/www.linuxmi.com ⚡ more /usr/share/doc/sudo/examples/sudo.conf
结果看起来就像 less 命令的结果一样。但是有一个区别，在屏幕的左下角，您会注意到更多显示文本文件的百分比，并且该数字随着您在文件中的移动而增加或减少。
使用 more 命令导航文件类似于 less 命令。使用Enter键移动到下一行，D移动到新页面，B返回一页。
就像Linux 中的 head 命令一样，您可以使用 more 来查看文件的前几部分。这是语法：
more -N filename
“
要显示 sudo.conf 文件的前五行，请执行以下命令：
linuxmi@linuxmi /home/linuxmi/www.linuxmi.com ⚡ more -5 /usr/share/doc/sudo/examples/sudo.conf
“
就像 less 和 more 命令一样，您可以使用 most 命令在 Linux 上读取文本文件。默认情况下，它并非在所有 Linux 发行版中都可用，因此您可能需要自己安装它。
要检查它是否已安装，请在终端中键入most。如果未安装，您的系统将询问您是否要安装它。输入y进行安装。或者，您可以使用计算机上的默认包管理器安装包。
linuxmi@linuxmi /home/linuxmi/www.linuxmi.com ⚡ most
“
most 命令的基本语法是：
most [选项] [文件的名称或位置]
要获取有关 most 命令的命令行帮助，请通过运行以下命令检查其手册页：
linuxmi@linuxmi /home/linuxmi/www.linuxmi.com ⚡ man most
most 命令的工作方式就像 less 和 more 的命令一样。
默认的 most 命令打印出文本文件的第一页。尝试一下：
linuxmi@linuxmi /home/linuxmi/www.linuxmi.com ⚡ most /usr/share/doc/sudo/examples/sudo.conf
输出与 less 和 more 命令有很大不同。在底部，有一条蓝线显示文件名和其他有用的命令。
您可以使用上述所有命令一次读取多个文件。这是每个语法：
less filename1 filename2 filename3more filename1 filename2 filename3most filename1 filename2 filename3
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还可以通过将管道符号与 less, more 和 most 命令一起使用来指示命令或正在运行的进程的输出。管道符号将一个命令的输出作为输入重定向到另一个命令。
例如，在检查操作系统上运行的进程列表时，您可以使用 less 的资源：
linuxmi@linuxmi /home/linuxmi/www.linuxmi.com ⚡ ps aux | less
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就像 less, more 和 most 命令一样，Linux 提供了许多命令来帮助您查看、操作和处理文本文件。其中一些包括cat、echo、head和tail。它们都以其独特的功能实现不同的目的。
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