Unix text processing utilities

AWK () is a scripting language designed for text processing and typically used as a data extraction and reporting tool. Like sed and grep, it is a filter, and it is a standard feature of most Unix-like operating systems. The shell command that runs the AWK processor is named .

grep is a command-line utility for searching text for lines that match a regular expression. Its name comes from the ed command g/re/p (global, regular expression, print), which has the same effect. grep was originally developed for the Unix operating system, and is commonly available on Unix-like and some other systems such as OS-9. The shell command that runs the utility has the same name: .

sed (short for stream editor) is a utility that transforms text via a script written in a relatively simple and compact programming language. It was developed from 1973 to 1974 by Lee E. McMahon of Bell Labs, and is available today for most operating systems. The functionality of sed is based on the scripting features of the interactive editor ed ("editor", 1971) and the earlier qed ("quick editor", 1965–66). It was one of the earliest tools to support regular expressions, and remains in use for text processing, most notably with the substitution command. Popular alternative tools for text man

Unix utility that concatenates and lists files

standard UNIX utility

UNIX utility to count newlines, words, and bytes

program on Unix and Unix-like systems

command in Unix-like operating systems

standard UNIX utility

standard UNIX utility

uniq is a utility command on Unix, Plan 9, Inferno, and Unix-like operating systems which, when fed a text file or standard input, outputs the text with adjacent identical lines collapsed to one, unique line of text.

Unix command line utility

standard UNIX utility

xargs (short for "extended arguments") is a command on Unix and most Unix-like operating systems used to build and execute commands from standard input. It converts input from standard input into arguments to a command.

In Unix and Unix-like operating systems, iconv (an abbreviation of internationalization conversion) is a command-line program and a standardized application programming interface (API) used to convert between different character encodings. "It can convert from any of these encodings to any other, through Unicode conversion."

command in Unix-like operating systems

Unix program

troff (), short for "typesetter roff", is the major component of a document processing system developed by Bell Labs for the Unix operating system. troff and the related nroff were both developed from the original roff.

standard UNIX utility

Unix utility

standard UNIX utility

Unix command

creating or manipulating electronic text

Unix command

agrep (approximate grep) is an open-source approximate string matching program, developed by Udi Manber and Sun Wu between 1988 and 1991, for use with the Unix operating system. It was later ported to OS/2, DOS, and Windows.

nroff (short for "new roff") is a text-formatting program on Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It produces output suitable for simple fixed-width printers and terminal windows. It is an integral part of the Unix help system, being used to format man pages for display.