tags 9370 notabug wishlist thanks Paul Eggert wrote: > On 08/24/11 23:15, Eli the Beareded wrote: >> On any other system I have used the -NUM option can be used with >> the -f option to specify how many lines of the file as-is to print >> before starting to follow it for updates. > > The interaction between -NUM and other options is so complicated > and unportable (different editions of the POSIX standards > disagree!) that GNU 'tail' is fairly conservative about where it > allows -NUM. It might be nice to add support for your particular usage, > if someone wants to write the code, but it'll require some care to make > sure it doesn't run afoul of existing usage or standard in some other way. > > In the meantime I suggest using "tail -f -n NUM", as that's standard > and portable these days.
I've marked this as a wishlist item.
