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One possible process for obtaining a group of distinct characters from a text file using bash is:

  1. Read the text file: Use the command cat or less to read the contents of the file. For example, cat filename.txt will display the contents of the file on the terminal.

  2. Extract unique characters: Use the command grep to extract unique characters from the text file. The -o option is used to output only the matches of the regular expression, and grep -o . filename.txt | sort -u will output a list of unique characters found in the file.

  3. Save the result: The output of the above command can be saved to another file using the redirection operator >. For example, grep -o . filename.txt | sort -u > output.txt will create a new file named output.txt and redirect the output of the command to that file.

  4. Print the result: The output of the above command can be displayed on the terminal using the cat command. For example, cat output.txt will display the list of unique characters found in the text file.

Note: The above process assumes that the text file contains only characters (i.e., no whitespace, punctuation, or other symbols). If the file contains words or sentences, the process might need to be adapted to extract only the unique characters.