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Introduction To Unix-And-Linux-Redirecting-Output-And-Finding-Files

- The document discusses various Linux commands for working with files including echo, cat, find, stat, file, and grep. - It provides examples of how to echo text to the console or a file, concatenate files, find files by name or properties, get file information and type, and search file contents. - Key points covered include redirecting output using > and >>, using cat to display file contents, searching with find by name, size, date, and other criteria, and using stat, file, and grep to get metadata and search files.

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Christopher Inclan
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© © All Rights Reserved
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43 views

Introduction To Unix-And-Linux-Redirecting-Output-And-Finding-Files

- The document discusses various Linux commands for working with files including echo, cat, find, stat, file, and grep. - It provides examples of how to echo text to the console or a file, concatenate files, find files by name or properties, get file information and type, and search file contents. - Key points covered include redirecting output using > and >>, using cat to display file contents, searching with find by name, size, date, and other criteria, and using stat, file, and grep to get metadata and search files.

Uploaded by

Christopher Inclan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Learning Objectives

Learners will be able to…


- Echo to the console and to a file
- Find files
- Get information about a file
- Concatenate files
Echoing to the console and to a file
In the last assignment we used the touch command to create an empty file.
Now we’ll learn an easy way to add content to a file.

Writing to the console using echo


The echo bash shell utility writes the result of the given inputs to the
standard output.

Type:

echo "Hello World!"

You should see Hello World! printed out under where you typed the
command since printing to the terminal is the standard output.

Writing to a file using echo


Echo lets you write to places other than standard output - you just have to
specify where.

Try this command:

echo "Hello World!" > myfile.txt

The above sends the output of the echo command to myfile.txt rather than
the console.

Breaking down the pieces of the above command:


1. The echo command gets a string argument ‘Hello world!’. This first
argument is also called standard input (or stdin for short)
2. The > character or stdout redirection operator changes the stdout to be a
file with the specified name rather than the console
3. The destination file will be created if it doesn’t exist and overwritten if it
does.

Type in the following two commands to see your file and list
it out:
ls
cat myfile.txt
Concatenating files
On the last page we learned that the > character redirects the stdout to a
file. It will create the file if it does not exist and overwrite it if it does.

Appending a file using the >> operator


The >> redirection operator does an append rather than an overwrite. It
will create the file if it doesn’t exist but if it does, it will append to it.

Let’s try it out:

echo "I added this line!" >> myfile.txt


cat myfile.txt

cat myfile.txt command in terminal followed by output which


says Hello World! on one line and I added this line! on the
following line

We’ll create another file with some text. We can still use the >> operator
even though the file doesn’t exist; it will create the file.

echo "First line in another file" >> anotherfile.txt


cat anotherfile.txt

Concatenating files using the >> operator


>> can also be used to combine two files:

1. The cat command lists out the contents of anotherfile.txt


2. The >> redirection operator appends it to the myfile.txt file, if the file
exists.

Let’s try it out:


cat anotherfile.txt >> myfile.txt
cat myfile.txt

The output of cat myfile.txt command printed out - Hello World!


on one line, I added this line!on a second line, and First line in
another file on the last line

The file anotherfile.txt is unchanged - you can list it out and check:

cat anotherfile.txt
Finding files
The find command looks for a file or directory based on the parameters
you set.

The syntax of the find command is:

find [starting-point] [expression]

The find utility traverses the file system evaluating an expression or


argument against each file and directory in the specified source path. In
addition to searching for files and directories by name, you can search by
permissions, users, groups, file types, date, and size.

First take a look at the man pages for the find command:

man find

It’s a bit overwhelming, find is a versatile and powerful command! We’ll


show you a few examples so you can get a sense on how it would be used.

Type the following commands to get a sense of the versatility of the find
command.

Finding a file by name


Take a look at this example of how to find a file by name:

1. The starting-point is /home/codio/ - specified by ~/


2. The expression is made up of two pieces: a test and a pattern
3. The test is indicated by -name, meaning we are checking file and
directory names
4. The pattern we are looking for is average.c

Try finding the average.c file with the following:


find ~/ -name "average.c"

Finding files by other properties


Based on the manual page, try each of the following:

Find files or directories with average in their name in the /home


directory

Solution

Instead of -name you will use the -path test.

find /home -path *average*

1. The starting-point is /home.


2. The test is -path, it means that the file/directory name should match
the pattern.
3. Any file or directory containing the word average is what we are
looking for. We use the * wildcard on either side to let there be any
number of characters on either side of the word average.

Find files in the home directory that are greater in size than 10 bytes.

Solution

This time you’ll use the -size test.

find ~/ -size +10

1. The starting-point is /home/codio/


2. The test is -size.
3. To specify bigger than, we need to put a + in front of the 10

Generally, you won’t look for files based on bytes. You may specify k for
kilobytes, M for megabytes next to the size (e.g. find ~/ -size +10k).

If you are looking for a range, you can specify both a minimum and
maximum file size. For example, to look for files between 10 and 50
bytes you would use find ~/ -size +10 -size -50
Find files or directories in the code directory in your workspace that
have been modified in the last year

Solution

This time you’ll use the -mtime test.

find ~/workspace/code -mtime -365

1. The starting-point is /home/codio/workspace/code


2. The test is -mtime.
3. Looking for any file modified between now and 365 days ago.
File information
There are two commands that are helpful for looking at file information (as
opposed to contents).

Display file status using stat


The stat utility can be used to provide access information about a file or
about the file system where it resides.

First take a look at the man pages for the stat command:

man stat

Notice the general syntax at the top is stat FILE.

Try the stat command:

stat code/src/average.c

challenge

What happens if you add the -f parameter, as in:

stat -f code/src/average.c

The -f parameter

When you use the -f parameter you get system information rather
than file information

Determine file type using file


The file utility can be used to get information about a file’s type.
First take a look at the man pages for the file command:

man file

Similar to stat, the general syntax is file FILE.

Try the file command

file code/src/average.c

challenge

What other information do you get when you look at a


binary file?

Try:

file code/bin/average

Viewing information about a binary file

This file is an executable, you can see which system it is built for and
information about the linker among other things.
Finding file content
The grep utility searches a file for a pattern or string and outputs all lines
that match to stdout.

First take a look at the man pages for grep to get a sense on
how it would be used:

man grep

The general syntax is pretty simple (grep PATTERN) but take a look at some
of the helpful OPTIONS under Matching Control (e.g. -w and -i).

Try out the grep command:

grep -w printf code/src/*.c

grep command with the w option specifying the pattern as printf


with the file/directory to be searched set to code/src/*.c

1. The -w option forces a whole word match.


2. The string printf is what we are searching for.
3. Searching in the relative path code/src/ for all .c files

Try these variations


Find all lines that do not contain printf in the c files in the code/src/
directory.

Solution

The -v option means do not contain.

grep -v printf code/src/*.c


Find all lines that contain concat, regardless of case, search in
code/docs.

Solution

The -i option means regardless of case.

grep -i 'concat' code/docs/*

Output the file names of files that contain concat, search in code/docs.

Solution

The -l option means output file name.

grep -l 'concat' code/docs/*

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