1 min read 264 words Updated Sep 12, 2026 Created Sep 12, 2026

you can achieve a lot from the command line, using awk, sort, uniq, -c, etc

AI will tell you how the commands to get what you want...
refer to the page on awk usage, and the NCL walkthrough, linked below:
awk
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awk

useful linux commands

CommandUseExamplesCommon Flags
catOutputting textcat output2.txt(takes text of file ‘output2.txt’ and prints it to the terminal window)
|Pipingcat output2.txt | [2nd command] (takes text of file output2.txt and uses it as an input for the next command)N/A
grepPattern matchinggrep -i ‘example’Prints all lines with ‘example’-i, -v
awkEverythingawk ‘{print $3}’(prints 3rd column of text)
wcWord countcat file.txt | wc -l(Counts lines in file.txt)-l, -c, -w
sortSorts outputcat file.txt | awk ‘{print $7}’ | sort -d(takes the output from awk and sorts it in dictionary order)-d, -n
uniqRemove duplicatescat file.txt | sort | uniq-c

using Spreadsheets

using a spreadsheet is also very helpful...
copy and paste into a google sheet or excel, or convert to a csv first if you can.
or just upload the file and open in a spreadsheet.

NCL Log Analysis with spreadsheets walkthrough