Working with Text Files
Christopher Negus · 2015
Being able to work with plain-text files is a critical skill for using Linux. Since so many configuration files and document files are in plain-text format, you need to become proficient with a text editor to effectively use Linux. Finding filenames and content in files are also critical skills. This chapter first shows how to use the locate and find commands for finding files and grep for searching files. It then provides a brief tutorial on the vi text editor, which can be used to manually edit a text file from any shell. It also describes the improved versions of vi called vim. With grep, you can search a single file or search a whole directory structure of files recursively. By default, grep searches text in a case-sensitive way, although case-insensitive searches can be done as well.