Displaying Text from File(s) to the Screen    "To my daughter Leonora: Without whose never failing sympathy and encouragement, this book would have been completed in half the time" - P.G. Wodehouse Of course, to be of use, files must be accessed and looked into. You can always open a text editor and read the content of a text file, but most times, you just want to take a quick look the file. To read/print the contents of a file on your screen, you can use either the "cat" (=catenate) or the "more" command or the "less" command or the "page" command. For example: $ cat foo.txt $ more foo.txt $ less foo.txt $ page foo.txt will display the contents of a file "foo.txt" on your screen. Catenate means "to connect in a series." The "cat" command displays the contents of a file. If more than one file is placed in the command line, i.e., "cat jimmy shook," -- FYI, "jimmy" and "shook" refer to male and female Chesapeake blue crabs -- the files are displayed in succession. (of course, file "jimmy" first, then file "shook") It is here that "cat" command derives its name. $ cat jimmy shook Either command works, but "more" or "less" or "page" is the intelligent version. With "more" or "less" or "page," the system stops at the end of a screenful and wait for you to hit a key to continue. If you use "cat, " everything flies by without stopping. (of course you can use to pause the screen and to resume, but this can be annoying) Using "more" or "less" or "page, " there are several keys that make more continue in different ways. key makes more only print out one additional line and then pause again. gives you a full screenful. When using "more/less/page" and "cat" you must be careful. Any file that is not a text file should not be viewed through "more/less/page" or "cat." (such as binary file) If you're not so sure what kind of file you're dealing with, you can use "file" command first to determine file type before displaying the file.