Filters and data utilities

Last revision July 20, 2004

UNIX data analysis utilities

Much of the power of UNIX comes from utilities that operate on files in a non-interactive mode to manipulate or edit text or data. These utilities are generally known as "filters" that read from standard input and write to standard output, so they can be used in combinations in pipes. Unless noted, these utilities will also accept input file names on the command line.

This section describes miscellaneous useful Unix utlities as shown in the table of contents. Useful utilities that have been described in other sections are linked below.

grep	Select records containing a desired string in any field.
sed	Edit or add/delete records.
awk	Access, select, and manipulate fields according to your own program.
tr	Translate characters - allows manipulation of the characters of a file.
sort	Sort by fields.
wc	A "word count" program that simply counts the number of lines, words, and characters in a file, giving one line of output with those three numbers (no header).

 

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