Text and archive tools

2 min read

Experimental includes the following commands in the system root. They are not part of the initramfs tool set.

Task	Commands	Package
Search text	`grep`, including `grep -E`, `grep -F` and `grep -P`	`org.gnu.grep`
Transform lines	`sed`	`org.gnu.sed`
Process fields and records	`awk`, `gawk`	`org.gnu.gawk`
Select files and pass arguments	`find`, `xargs`	`org.gnu.findutils`
Compare files	`diff`, `cmp`, `diff3`, `sdiff`	`org.gnu.diffutils`
Read long files interactively	`less`	`com.greenwoodsoftware.less`
Identify file contents	`file`	`com.darwinsys.file`
Create and extract tar archives	`tar`	`org.gnu.tar`
Gzip compression	`gzip`, `gunzip`, `zcat`	`org.gnu.gzip`
XZ compression	`xz`, `unxz`, `xzcat`	`org.tukaani.xz`
Zstandard compression	`zstd`, `unzstd`, `zstdcat`	`com.facebook.zstd`
Bzip2 compression	`bzip2`, `bunzip2`, `bzcat`	`org.sourceware.bzip2`
Create ZIP archives	`zip`	`net.sourceforge.infozip.zip`
Inspect and extract ZIP archives	`unzip`, `zipinfo`	`net.sourceforge.infozip.unzip`

Peiosutils supplies the other basic text commands, including cat, head, tail, sort, uniq, cut, paste, join, tr and wc.

Inspecting text #

grep -n 'error' output.txt
awk '{ print $1 }' records.txt
diff before.txt after.txt
less output.txt

In less, use Space to move forward, b to move back, /pattern to search, n for the next match and q to quit. The pager does not install an editor; its edit command requires a separately installed editor.

Working with archives #

GNU tar invokes the separate compressor commands included above. The matching compression libraries alone do not provide those commands.

tar -caf backup.tar.xz documents/
tar -tf backup.tar.xz
mkdir restored
tar -xf backup.tar.xz -C restored

zip -r documents.zip documents/
unzip -l documents.zip
unzip documents.zip -d restored-zip

Use .tar.gz, .tar.xz, .tar.zst or .tar.bz2 with tar -a to choose the compressor by suffix. file archive identifies a file by its contents.

These formats exchange file contents and conventional archive metadata. Do not use them as a substitute for a Peios system backup that preserves native security descriptors and registry state.

Edit this page