6. Viewing (Mostly Text) Files
One of the great things about most Linux boxes is that virtually all important system configurations, logs, and information files are in text files. Nowadays, these text files are almost always encoded as the all-encompassing, Unicode-compliant UTF-8, taking over from the ancient (in computer terms, 45 years and counting is ancient!) ASCII standard. Because text files have been the basis of UNIX since its beginnings, there’s a wealth of software commands you can use to view their contents (and even if they’re not text files, you can still find out some necessary information about them). This chapter looks at commands you’ll use when working with text—and other—files.
Figure Out a File’s Type
file
Most of the ...
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