The `cat` is a very useful command of bash to create or display the file’s content. The uses of `cat`, `less`, and `more` commands have shown here. The uses of shell commands to open a file for creating or reading are shown in this tutorial. The ways to open a file for various purposes have been shown in this tutorial. The file can be opened for reading or writing by using bash script also. Many GUI editors also exist in Linux to open a file, such as Gedit, Geany, etc. nano, vim, vi, etc., an editor is used to open a file from the terminal. Any text editor can be used to open a file in bash. Many bash commands exist to open a file for reading or writing, such as ` cat`, `less`, `more` etc. A file can be opened for reading, writing, or appending. So, for example, if you renamed 'file.txt' to just 'textfile' then open textfile would still open it in the default text-file editing application, as long as file textfile still thought that 'textfile' was actually a text file.The file is used to store the data permanently and use the data in any script when requires. You can use the 'file' command to reveal what the operating system thinks the file type is: file file.txt. By default, this will be /Applications/TextEdit.app however, it's possible for this setting to get overridden:įinally, any file that's of the 'text' type will get opened by the application bound to the text type if you just say open file.txt. The -t option means 'open the file with the default application for editing text files, as determined via LaunchServices'.

The -e option means 'open the file argument with the TextEdit application': The -a option means 'open the file argument with the named application': Here are some possible answers, all using the 'open' command-line utility.

How to edit text file in terminal mac