Re: tail +n does not work under Linux?

[Matthew Woehlke]

Christophe LYON wrote:
> > > I am using coreutils-7.2, and I have just reproduced the issue with 
> > > 7.3, under Linux RHEL 3 and 4.
> >
> > Also with Fedora 10's 6.12 package. The behavior change I think may 
> > have been in 6.0 (it is probably in the changelog).
>
> I do remember that change, but I also thought that it had been reverted 
> a few releases later.

-<number> seems to work presently, +<number> doesn't.

> > > Curiously, it works OK under Solaris 8.
> > Are you talking about GNU coreutils here, or the Solaris tail? If the 
> > behavior is different for GNU coreutils, that is probably a bug.
>
> Yes, GNU coreutils built under Solaris.

Hmm. That sounds suspiciously like a bug, then. I don't think the 
behavior should be different across platforms. (Time for one of the 
maintainers to chime in...)

> But 'man tail' says:
>        -n, --lines=N
>               output the last N lines, instead of the last 10; or use 
>               +N  to output lines starting with the Nth
>
> does it mean that '-n' is mandatory before a number? I interpreted it as 
>  '-number'.

I read it as, yes, -n is still required (but agree it isn't as clear as 
it might be), especially given the blurb in the info doc. IOW I read 
'+N' as replacing 'N', not as replacing '-n N' or '--lines=N'.

--
Matthew
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