Jay Fields recommends the following commands for working with log files, etc.:

• cat: concatenate files and print on standard output

• sort: sort lines of text files, e.g., cat order.*

  sort

• grep: filter lines matching a pattern
• cut: remove sections from each line
• sed: perform basic text transforms
• uniq: remove duplicate lines from a file
• find: search for files in a directory hierarchy: find /Users -name “order.*”
• less: move forward and backward within a file. Forward: /, backward: ?, + f tails the file.

Link: Jay Fields’ Thoughts: 8 Linux Commands Every Developer Should Know via blog.jayfields.com