HEAD(1) | General Commands Manual | HEAD(1) |
head
— display
first few lines of files
head |
[- count |
-n count]
[file ...] |
The head
utility copies the first
count lines of each specified
file to the standard output. If no files are named,
head
copies lines from the standard input. If
count is omitted, it defaults to 10.
The options are as follows:
-
count |
-n
countIf more than one file is specified, head
precedes the output of each file with the following, in order to distinguish
files:
==> file
<==
The head
utility exits 0 on
success, and >0 if an error occurs.
To display the first 500 lines of the file foo:
$ head -n 500 foo
head
can be used in conjunction with
tail(1) in the following way to, for
example, display only line 500 from the file foo:
$ head -n 500 foo | tail
-1
The head
utility is compliant with the
IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”)
specification.
The historic syntax
-
count is supported by this
implementation.
The head
utility first appeared in
1BSD.
Bill Joy, August 24, 1977.
October 25, 2015 | OpenBSD-current |