File Viewing

Below are the commands used to view the contents of a file, soft link or of a hard link without opening

(Explanations for these links are explained in a separate post ).


i) cat

cat filename

ii) more

more filename

iii) less

 less filename

(Note: Give Enter and Q accordingly to continue and terminate the execution)

Difference B/W more and less:

more just prints the text as is, stopping for page breaks, and does not clear the screen, it can be back grounded but it doesn't clear the screen where 

less is a full-screen application that gives you a searchable, scrollable window and clears the screen after you exit.

Difference B/W more and cat:

 more can be used to work with the standard output but not cat

For example:

We can execute 

ls -lrt | more 

but not ls -lrt|cat