Comment out hashes in large configuration files

Here is a small tip for system administrators, who need to tackle large configuration files, which include lots of commented lines (marked by #). With this tip you can remove all those hashes and provide only an uncommented configuration view for faster lookup into the file.

If you want to check the configuration file of the Squid proxy server, run the following command:

#cat squid.conf | egrep -v ^#

This will show only lines that do not start with a hash mark, thus giving the configuration parameter that is being used in the current set-up.