Read files with cat and less

Short files are easy to print all at once. Long files scroll off the screen. Bash gives you both tools: cat for a full dump, and less for paging.

cat writes every line to the terminal. Use it when the file fits on one or two screens.

See the whole note:

less opens the file in a pager. Space moves down a screen, arrow keys move line by line, and q quits. The terminal is not flooded.

mkdir -p terminal-demo
printf '%s\n' 'Line 1' 'Line 2' 'Line 3' > terminal-demo/long.txt
less terminal-demo/long.txt

That is the right default for logs, manuals, and anything you are not sure will fit.

Rule of thumb: cat when you want everything immediately; less when you want to walk through the file. You can still search inside less with /pattern.