Printing Files

To print a file we use the lpr command. To print a file to the default printer we can do the following:

$lpr our_file
$

If we want the printout on a different printer, we can use the -P flag and specify another printer (eg. raw):

$lpr -Praw our_file
$

The lpr command can also take input from a pipe:

$ls -lF | lpr
$

This will print the contents of the directory. The last option we have for the lpr command, is to take our input from the standard input:

$lpr
This is just a test print.
$

Now that we have submitted our print jobs, how can we check on their progress?