Which Linux command or utility is simple, powerful, and surprisingly unknown to many people or used less often?
This could be a command or a piece of software or an application.
For example I’m surprised to find that many people are unaware of Caddy, a very simple web server that can make setting up a reverse proxy incredibly easy.
Another example is fzf. Many people overlook this, a fast command-line fuzzy finder. It’s versatile for searching files, directories, or even shell history with minimal effort.
Use
lessfor checking contents of files. Many people usecatall the time, but I don’t like it, because if you do that often, your terminal window quickly gets flooded with stuff, and then you have to scroll up and down if you wanna see a previous output. Withless, your file opens in a different “frame”, which you can close when you’re done.I’d like to interject for a moment. There is also a tool called bat that is just cat with extra features. It prints out and works just like cat, but when the contents get too big, it works like less. The is syntax highlighting and works with git.
It’s replaced my need for cat and less.
Try bat…
Yes! I use less all the time, combine it with grep, etc.
cat <your file> | more
Useless use of cat award!