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Linux File Viewing Series
Last updated: April 1, 2026
Linux offers a rich set of tools for reading, inspecting, and displaying file content from the command line. Whether you’re paging through a large log file, searching for patterns with grep, or navigating a file in vim, the shell gives you precise control over how content is viewed.
This guide covers the essential techniques for viewing files in Linux: from core pagers and readers to text searching, Vi/Vim navigation, file comparison, and tools for opening specialized formats like EPUB, PDF, HEIC, and CAD files.
Viewing and Reading File Content
- Viewing Files in Linux Using cat, more, and less
- Differences Between more, less, and most in Linux
- Display the First “n” Characters of a File in Linux
- Printing Specified Lines From a File
- How to Read the First and the Last Line From Input
- Adding Syntax Highlighting for the less Command
- Using the tail Command with Colored Output
Searching and Filtering Text
- Difference Between CR LF, LF, and CR Line Break Types
- grep – How to Output Only the Content of a Capturing Group
- How to Find File Encoding in Linux
- Limiting the Output of grep
- Show Only the N-th Line After the Match
- Using grep After a Specified Line Number
Navigating and Viewing in Vi and Vim
- Basic Vi Navigation and Scroll
- Basic and Advanced Searching in Vi
- Character Navigation or How to Jump to a Specific Character in Vi
- Displaying the Full Path of the Current File in Vim
- How to Clear Word Highlighting in Vim
- How to Make Vim Remember the Last Edit Position
- Working With Vim Windows
Comparing and Inspecting Files
- How to View the Contents of tar.gz Without Extracting It
- How To Compare Two Directories on Linux
- How to Test tar File Integrity
- Comparing Two Files in Linux
- Comparing tar Files in Linux
- How to Color the Output of diff
- Displaying Files Side by Side in Linux
Viewing Specialized File Formats