Linux Text Processing Cheat Sheet

Process and manipulate text with grep, sed, awk, and more.

What this cheat sheet is for

This linux text processing reference helps you complete common developer tasks quickly and avoid repeated trial-and-error when working under deadlines.

When you need a reliable command or pattern during debugging and incident response.
When you are implementing a feature and want a known-good syntax example immediately.
When onboarding teammates and documenting repeatable workflows for daily use.
When reviewing pull requests and verifying that command usage follows best practices.

Grep - Search Text

Search for pattern in files.

grep "pattern" file.txt
grep -i "pattern" file.txt
grep -r "pattern" dir/
grep -n "pattern" file.txt
grep -v "pattern" file.txt

Sed - Stream Editor

Find and replace text.

sed 's/old/new/' file.txt
sed 's/old/new/g' file.txt
sed -i 's/old/new/g' file.txt
sed '/pattern/d' file.txt

Awk - Text Processing

Process text by fields.

awk '{print $1}' file.txt
awk -F":" '{print $1}' /etc/passwd
awk '/pattern/ {print $0}' file.txt

Cut - Extract Columns

Extract fields from text.

cut -d":" -f1 /etc/passwd
cut -c1-10 file.txt

Sort

Sort text lines.

sort file.txt
sort -r file.txt
sort -n file.txt

Uniq

Remove duplicates.

sort file.txt | uniq
uniq -c file.txt

Common mistakes / Pitfalls

People often copy a command or pattern without adapting placeholders, which can break production workflows unexpectedly.
It is easy to forget environment-specific differences, so always verify behavior in your shell, runtime, or API gateway before shipping.
Many errors come from skipping small validation steps, so test with realistic sample input before relying on the result.

Last updated: February 2026