Viewing log files without using vi or any other text editor

Amit Agarwal Linux

This is quite useful for viewing files without opening them.. Saves quite a lot of time in viewing the logs 🙂

Want to see the first 5 lines of the /etc/passwd file? Pretty easy, just use the \"head\" command:

head -5 /etc/passwd

Want to see the last 20 lines of the /etc/passwd file? Again, pretty easy, just use the \"tail\" command:

tail -20 /etc/passwd

But what if you only want to see lines 10-15 of a given file? Neither the \"head\" nor the \"tail\" commands alone will do. Instead, use the \"sed\" command to print the range of lines you want to see:

sed -n \'10,15p\' /etc/passwd

This command works great, even if you want to see a few lines somewhere in the middle of a 100,000 line file.

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