On Sat, 10 Jul 2010 03:50:32 -0700 (PDT) Forest Oakwater <[email protected]> wrote:
> Using this data file: > d...@elrond:~/backgrounds/frazetta$ cat data.txt > line 1 > line 2 > line 3 > line 4 > > and this command: > d...@elrond:~/backgrounds/frazetta$ /usr/bin/tail +2 data.txt > /usr/bin/tail: cannot open `+2' for reading: No such file or directory > ==> data.txt <== > line 1 > line 2 > line 3 > line 4 > > Output was incorrect. The manpage and builtin help text both state: > > d...@elrond:~/backgrounds/frazetta$ /usr/bin/tail --help > ... > -n, --lines=N output the last N lines, instead of the last > 10; or use +N to output lines starting with the Nth > ... This is not what you did. You did "tail +2", whereas the man says you should do "tail -n +2", or "tail --lines=+2". If you want to output the last N lines, rather than starting from the Nth, you'd do "tail -n 2" or "tail --lines=2". The "tail +2" syntax is obsolete; probably the recent versions of coreutils (which 7.4 is not, anyway) dropped support for it. -- D.
