can use to get the job done.
There are many ways to display a text file quickly on the terminal window. 90 percent of the time, I use the cat command for this purpose. What if you want to display a large text file (e.g., a password's dictionary file)? Then you have three choices: the head , tail , and more and less commands. It is important to note that you can use the grep command to filter out the results that you're looking for. For example, to identify the word gus123 inside the rockyou.txt dictionary file, you can do the following:
root@kali:/usr/share/wordlists# cat rockyou.txt | grep gus123 gus123 angus123 gus12345 […]
The head command will display 10 lines in a text file starting from the top, and you can specify how many lines you want to display by adding the ‐n option:
$head -n [i] [file name] root@kali:/usr/share/wordlists# head -n 7 rockyou.txt 123456 12345 123456789 password iloveyou princess 1234567
The tail command will display the last 10 lines in a file, and you can specify the number of lines as well using the ‐n switch:
$tail -n [i] [file name] root@kali:/usr/share/wordlists# tail -n 5 rockyou.txt
To browse a large file, use the more command. You need to press Enter or the spacebar on your keyboard to step forward. Pressing the B key will let you go backward. Finally, to search for text, press the / (forward slash) and the Q key to quit:
$more [file name]
less is like the more command; it allows you to view the contents of a file and navigate inside it as well. The main difference between more and less is that the less command is faster than the more command because it does not load the entire file at once, and it allows you to navigate inside the file using the Page Up/Down keys as well:
$less [file name]
To sort a text file, simply use the sort command:
$sort [file name]> [sorted file name] root@kali:~/temp# cat file1.txt 5 6 4 root@kali:~/temp# sort file1.txt>file1_sorted.txt root@kali:~/temp# cat file1_sorted.txt 4 5 6
To remove duplicates in a text file, you must use the uniq command:
$uniq [file name]> [no duplicates file name] root@kali:~/temp# cat file2.txt 5 6 4 4 5 5 5 root@kali:~/temp# uniq file2.txt> file2_uniq.txt root@kali:~/temp# cat file2_uniq.txt 5 6 4 5
Later in this book, you will learn how to use the sort and uniq commands together to create a custom passwords dictionary file.
Vim vs. Nano
For the terminal window, we have two popular text editors, vim and nano. Most of the time, you can tackle four tasks in text editors:
Open/create the text file
Make text changes
Search for text
Save and quit
Nano is easier than vim. It's up to you to choose any of them; it's a matter of preference.
To open/create a text file, use these commands:
$vim [ text filename ]
$nano [ text filename ]
Once the text file is opened, you will need to start making your changes:
In nano, you can just enter your text freely.
In vim, you need to press I on your keyboard to enter insert mode.
If you want to search for a specific word inside your file, use these commands:
In nano, press Ctrl+W.
In vim, it depends which mode you're in.If you're in insert text mode, then hit the Esc key and then press / followed by the word that you want to search for.If you're in normal mode, then just press / followed by the word that you want to search for.
Finally, it's time to save and quit your text editor:
In nano, press Ctrl+O to save, press the Enter key to execute the save task, and then press Ctrl+X to exit.
In vim, make sure that you are in normal mode first (if you're not, then press the Esc key to go back in normal mode) and then use :wq . The w is for “write,” and the q is to quit.
Searching and Filtering Text
One more thing to learn in the world of text files is the search mechanism. There are so many ways to search and filter out text, but the popular ones are as follows:
grep
awk
cut
You've seen me using the grep command a lot. This filter command is structured in the following way:
$grep [options] [pattern] [file name]
Let's say you want to search for the word password in all the files starting from the root system ( / ).
root@kali:/# grep -irl "password" / /boot/grub/i386-pc/zfscrypt.mod /boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod /boot/grub/i386-pc/legacycfg.mod
Here's what the options mean:
‐i : To ignore case and include all the uppercase/lowercase letters
‐r : To search recursively inside subfolders
‐l : To print the filenames where the filter matches
As another example, let's say you want to count the number of occurrences of the word password in the dictionary file rockyou.txt :
root@kali:/# cd /usr/share/wordlists/ root@kali:/usr/share/wordlists# grep -c "password" rockyou.txt 3959
The awk command is an advanced tool for filtering text files, and it uses the following pattern:
$awk /[search criteria]/ [options] [file name]
For example, let's say you want to search for the text root inside the /etc/passwd file:
root@kali:/# awk '/root/' /etc/passwd root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash nm-openvpn:x:125:130:NetworkManager OpenVPN,,,:/var/lib/openvpn/chroot:/usr/sbin/nologin
Let's take the challenge one more step further. Let's say you
