Unlock Powerful Linux Text Tools: col, colrm, comm, csplit, and More

Linux col command

The col command filters out control characters, useful for cleaning up RLF characters that appear as garbled text when redirecting documentation with shell redirection operators.

Linux colrm command

The colrm command removes specified columns from its input; without arguments it passes all lines unchanged.

Linux comm command

The comm command compares two sorted files line by line, outputting three columns: lines unique to the first file, lines unique to the second, and lines common to both; it can read from standard input when "-" is used as a filename.

Linux csplit command

The csplit command splits a file into pieces according to a pattern, naming the pieces xx00, xx01, xx02, etc.; it also accepts "-" to read from standard input.

Linux ed command

The ed command is a line‑oriented text editor, useful for editing large files or performing scripted edits within shell scripts, though it is less commonly used than vi.

Linux egrep command

The egrep command searches files for extended regular expressions, behaving like grep -E with a more expressive pattern syntax.

Linux ex command

The ex command starts the vim editor in Ex mode, offering the same syntax and options as vi with the ability to return to normal mode via :vi or :visual.

Linux fgrep command

The fgrep command performs a fixed‑string search, equivalent to grep -F, locating lines that contain the specified literal strings.

Linux fmt command

The fmt command reformats text files to a specified width, reading from a file or standard input when "-" is supplied.

Linux fold command

The fold command wraps lines longer than a given width, inserting a line‑break character; it reads from a file or standard input.

Linux grep command

The grep command searches for lines matching a pattern in one or more files, outputting matching lines; it also reads from standard input when no file is specified.

Linux ispell command

The ispell command checks spelling using a dictionary (default /usr/lib/ispell/english.hash) and can suggest corrections or add new words to a personal dictionary.

Linux jed command

The jed editor, written in Slang, is suited for editing source code.

Linux joe command

The joe editor is a full‑screen text editor with more features than pico, supporting multiple files and cut‑paste between them.

Linux join command

The join command merges lines from two files that share a common field, outputting the combined result.

Linux look command

The look command performs a prefix lookup of English words, displaying all dictionary entries that start with the given string.

Linux mtype command

The mtype command, part of the mtools suite, emulates the MS‑DOS type command to display the contents of DOS files.

Linux pico command

The pico editor is a simple, display‑oriented text editor that ships with the pine mail/news client.

Linux rgrep command

The rgrep command recursively searches directories for files containing lines that match a pattern, similar to grep -r.

Linux sed command

The sed stream editor applies scripts to transform or edit text files automatically, useful for batch processing.

Linux sort command

The sort command orders the lines of a text file alphabetically or numerically.

Linux spell command

The spell command checks spelling by reading from standard input and reporting misspelled words.

Linux tr command

The tr command translates or deletes characters from its input stream.

Linux expr command

The expr utility evaluates arithmetic or string expressions in shell scripts.

Linux uniq command

The uniq command filters out or reports repeated adjacent lines in a sorted file.

Linux wc command

The wc command counts bytes, words, and lines in a file or from standard input.

Linux let command

The let builtin evaluates arithmetic expressions in Bash without requiring a leading $ on variable names.