Learn Programming | CodeWithMuh

Reading Files: cat & less

cat prints entire file contents to the terminal. It's great for small files. For larger files, use less which lets you scroll through page by page.

bash

# Print file contents
cat hello.txt

# Print with line numbers
cat -n hello.txt

# Concatenate multiple files
cat file1.txt file2.txt

# View a long file (scroll with arrow keys, q to quit)
less /var/log/syslog

Tip:cat stands for 'concatenate' — it was originally designed to join files together, not just display them!