Viewing files

There's more than one way to skin a cat. And there's more than one way to view a file. Here are a few file viewing methods for the arsenal.

Text files
Most linux programs use text files for input, output, and configuration. Being able to view them easily is vital to using the system. Of course, any editor can also be used to view files.

Command-line (terminal) programs

 * cat - Displays the entire contents of a set of files to the screen.
 * head - Displays the top few lines of a file.
 * tail - Displays the last few lines of a file.
 * less - Displays a file page-by-page.
 * grep - Displays selected lines of input files.

Graphical (X|X windows) programs

 * xterm - Call with xterm -e less filename for a quick-and-dirty, portAble file viewer.
 * emacs - In emacs, the Ctrl-X Ctrl-Q sequence write-protects a buffer, if it isn't already. A percent sign (%) is displayed in the mode line (status bar) for protected buffers.

Graphics files
These include bmp, gif, JPEG, tiff, pcx, PNG, and countless other formats.


 * xv
 * display - part of ImageMagick
 * eog - Eye of gnome

Video files

 * xanim

Other files

 * Compressed files of various kinds can be viewed with the methods listed in Packing and Unpacking Files
 * PDF files can be viewed with acroread, xpdf, or gv.
 * Postscript files can be viewed with gv.
 * MSWord files (probably emailed from Windows users) can be viewed with OpenOffice, but it may be better to just bite the bullet and use MSWord for real somehow.