Linux Pipe Commands: How to Use

In Linux, pipe commands can link multiple commands together using the vertical bar symbol (|), allowing the output of one command to serve as the input for another. This enables collaboration and chaining of multiple commands.

For instance, if you want to find the number of lines in a file that contain a specific keyword, you can combine the grep and wc commands.

grep "keyword" filename.txt | wc -l

This command first uses the grep command to search for lines containing the keyword “keyword” and then passes the results to the wc command to count the lines and output the result. By using pipe commands, multiple commands can collaborate to improve work efficiency.

In addition to using the grep and wc commands, you can also connect multiple commands using pipes to achieve more complex operations. Pipe commands are powerful and commonly used in Linux, helping users to handle data and execute commands more flexibly.