CS 160A - Filters for Text Processing

Filters for Text Processing (Chapter 20 in Shotts)

All Unix-like operating systems rely heavily on text files for data storage. So it makes sense that there are many tools for manipulating text. In this chapter, we will look at pro- grams that are used to “slice and dice” text. In the next chapter, we will look at more text processing, focusing on programs that are used to format text for printing and other kinds of human consumption.

• cat - concatenate files and print on standard output
• sort - sort lines of text files
• uniq - report or omit repeated lines
• paste - merge lines of files
• join - join lines of two files on a common field
• diff - compare files line by line
• tr - translate or delete characters
• sed - stream editor for filtering and tranforming text

We'll go through some examples together in class using examples from Shotts