2
Command-Line Building Blocks

Learning Objectives

By the end of the chapter, you will be able to:

• Use redirection to control command input and output
• Construct pipelines between commands
• Use commands for text filtering
• Use text transformation commands
• Analyze tabular data using data-processing commands

This chapter introduces you to the two main composing mechanisms of command lines: redirection and piping. You will also expand your vocabulary of commands to be able to perform a wide variety of data-processing tasks.