Top 5 Shell Commands for Working with Data Files (craig-russell.co.uk)

I've posted this to HN for the discussion more than anything else.

What are your top shell commands for working with data files?

I also regularly use tee to take copies of data from the middle of a complex pipeline, and I regularly pipe results into a a file, background the task, and then monitor with tail or tail -f.

  # complex_command > output_file &
  # tail -f output_file

This allows me to leave the ask running while I do other things, then come back and check on it latter. It also lets me use ETA to estimate when tasks will finish.

Typos:

"Here's my top 5 ..." should be "Here are my top 5 ..."

"At it's simplest ..." should be "At its simplest ..."

"... a single file in to many." should be "... a single file into many." Same error occurs shortly after.

"...a work on Awk ..." should be "...a word on AWK ..."