bug#6605: +N lines broken with /usr/bin/tail (GNU coreutils) 7.4

[Paul Eggert]

On 07/10/10 12:53, Davide Brini wrote:

> The "tail +2" syntax is obsolete; probably the recent versions of coreutils
> (which 7.4 is not, anyway) dropped support for it.

It's not just obsolete: it's incompatible with POSIX 1003.1-2001,
which is why it was dropped a while ago.  You can bring back
support for "tail +2" by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in
your environment; this is documented in the coreutils manual.
But it's probably better to update those dusty old shell scripts
to use the POSIX-specified syntax.