Re: FW: +N option in tail command

[Philip Rowlands]

On Wed, 11 Nov 2009, נחשון ישורון/Nachshon Yeshurun wrote:

> Man pages for the tail command shows the ability to use the +N option.
> Yet, attempting it on Ubuntu 9.10 results in an error.
> Is this a bug?

Not a bug.

> From man pages:
>
>      -n, --lines=N
>              output the last N lines, instead of the last 10; or  use  +N  to
>              output lines starting with the Nth
>
>
> Attempting the command:
>
> address@hidden:~/temp$ tail +5 /etc/passwd
> tail: cannot open `+5' for reading: No such file or directory

The manpage syntax should be read as
$ tail -n +5
or
$ tail --lines=+5


Regarding the bare "tail +5" and the issues surrounding this usage 
please see:
http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/coreutils-faq.html#Old-tail-plus-N-syntax-now-fails


Cheers,
Phil