ULI101 Week 5

head and tail commands

These commands display the beginning or the end of a file respectively. By default, 10 lines are displayed. The entire file will be displayed if it is less than 10 lines in length

# head [-line_count] file
$ head -3 users.log

cut

• Selects fields or columns from files or standard input
• Range can be specified in multiple ways:
  • 1-10 - first 10
  • 3-8 - 3rd to 8th
  • -10 - up to 10th
  • 2- - from 2nd until the end of line
  • 1-3,4,10- - combination of above
• Important options:
  • -c - cut characters
  • -f - cut fields
• Default field delimiter is the tab
• Other field delimiter can be specified using the -d option
• Field delimiter must be a single character, only one delimiter is supported
• If special characters are used for delimiters they must be quoted

# will cut first 2 characters
$ cut -c 1-2

# will cut 2nd and 5th field
$ cut -f 2,5

# will cut first 2 fields delimited with a comma
$ cut -d, -f1-2

# space is the field delimiter
$ cut -d” “ -f1

sort command

• Sorts single files or standard input
• Merges and sorts multiple files
• Is able to sort by fields
• Popular options:
  • -f - ignore case in comparisons
  • -n - numeric sort
  • -u - display unique entries
  • -r - reverse sort

wc

• Counts the number of lines, words and/or characters in a file
• Usage: wc option [filename]
• Options:
  • -l - count lines
  • -w - count words (delimited by whitespace)
  • -m - count characters
• If no option is specified all 3 counts are displayed

grep utility

• Searches for literal text and text patterns
• Pattern-based searches will be covered in detail next week
• Example usage: grep student *
• Works with files and/or standard input
• Acts like a filter - outputs only lines which are successfully matched to a given regular expression
• A successful match can be entire line or any part of it
• The entire line that has the match inside will be displayed
• Useful grep options
  • -i - ignores case
  • -n - numbers lines in the output
  • -v - reverse match
  • -c - displays the count of matched lines

Standard Input and Standard Output

• Standard input (stdin) is a general term which describes how or where a command receives information from
• When no information is coming from standard input a command usually has defaults or expects an argument (parameter). Typically such parameter would be a file name
• Standard output (stdout) describes the place where or how the commands sends its output
• For most commands the standard input and output are your terminal's keyboard and screen
• Standard input can be redirected from a file or piped from another command
• Standard output can be redirected to a file or piped to another command

Standard Input Redirection

command < filename

• Example: tr ‘a-z’ ‘A-Z’ < ls.txt=
• Used for commands which do not accept a file as argument

Standard Output Redirection

command > filename

• Redirtects a command's standard output to a file
• Stdout redirection is represented by the > symbol.
• Example: ls > ls.txt will redirect output from the ls command into a file called ls.txt. In other words the output of ls will be saved to ls.txt
• If the file exists already its content will be replaced
• To append to a file, the >> symbol can be used

Standard Error

• In addition to standard input and standard output UNIX commands have standard error
• Standard error is the place where error messages are sent to
• By default error messages are sent to the terminal
• Standard error can be redirected by using the 2> or 2>> redirection operators
• Sometimes you might want to redirect the standard error to the same place as standard output
• Use the 2>&1 redirection for that

Inter-process communication

• Commands can send their standard output directly to standard input of other commands
• A few simple commands can form a more powerful one
• No temporary files are necessary
• This is achieved by using pipes and tees

Pipes

• Pipes are represented by |
• Many commands can be “piped” together, but filter commands use them especially often
• Each filter processes the initial input based on it's design
• Filters must be chained in specific order
• Example piping use: ls | less

Tee

• UNIX pipe with the tee utility can be used to split the flow of information
• Example: ls | tee unsorted.txt | sort

/dev/null file

• The /dev/null file (sometimes called the bit bucket or black hole) is a special system file that discards all data written into in
• Useful to discard unwanted command output,
• Example: find / -name “homer” 2> /dev/null
• Also, /dev/null can provide null data (EOF only) to processes reading from it
• Useful to purge (empty) files etc, for example: cat /dev/null > ~/.bash_history

“Here” documents

• The << symbol indicates a “here” document

sort << EOF
word
name
car
EOF

• Anything between EOF…EOF is sent to the standard input of a utility
• You can use some other string/symbol instead of “EOF”