- Head (Unix)
head is a program on
Unix andUnix-like systems used to display the first few lines of a text file or piped data. The commandsyntax is:head [options] <file_name>
By default, head will print the first 10 lines of its input to the
standard output . The number of lines printed may be changed with acommand line option. The following example shows the first 20 lines of "filename":head -n 20 "filename"
This displays the first 5 lines of all files starting with "foo":
head -n 5 "foo*"
Some versions omit the n and just let you say -5.
Flags
-c
Copy first x number of bytes. Other
Many early versions of Unix did not have this command, and so documentation and books had
sed do this job:sed 5q "foo"
This says to print 5 lines, then quit.
ee also
*tail
*List of Unix programs External links
* [http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/head-invocation.html head] manual page from
GNU coreutils .
* [http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=head&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+5.3-RELEASE+and+Ports&format=html FreeBSD documentation for head]
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