These shell tools help you inspect and transform text quickly: base64 for encoding/decoding, less for paging, head/tail for previews, and redirection for moving data between commands and files.

base64 (encode/decode)

• Encode: echo "hello" | base64
• Decode: echo "aGVsbG8=" | base64 -d
• Use for safe text transport; don’t treat it as encryption.

less (page through text)

• less file.txt — open; use arrows/PageUp/PageDown.
• /pattern to search; n/N to move through matches.
• q to quit. Works with pipelines: kubectl get pods | less.

head and tail (preview)

• head: head -n 20 file.txt — first 20 lines (default 10).
• tail: tail -n 50 file.txt — last 50 lines.
• Follow logs: tail -f app.log or tail -F to follow across rotations.
• Combine with grep: tail -f app.log | grep ERROR.

Input/output redirection

• Stdout to file (overwrite): command > out.txt
• Stdout append: command >> out.txt
• Stdin from file: command < input.txt
• Stderr handling: command 2> err.txt (stderr) · command > out.txt 2>&1 (both)
• Pipes: producer | consumer — send stdout of one command into stdin of the next.

Quick combos

• dmesg | tail -n 30 — last 30 kernel log lines.
• tail -f app.log | less (with F inside less to follow).
• grep -i error app.log | head -n 5 — first 5 error lines.
• cat file | base64 | head -n 1 — encode and preview.

With these tools and redirection patterns, you can inspect files, logs, and streams efficiently right from the shell.