HEAD(1) | General Commands Manual | HEAD(1) |
head
— display
first lines of a file
head |
[-n count |
-c bytes]
[file ...] |
This filter displays the first count lines or bytes of each of the specified files, or of the standard input if no files are specified. If count is omitted it defaults to 10.
The following options are available:
-c
bytes,
--bytes
=bytes-n
count,
--lines
=countIf more than a single file is specified, each file is preceded by a header consisting of the string “==> XXX <==” where “XXX” is the name of the 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 -n
1
The head
command appeared in PWB UNIX.
April 10, 2018 | macOS 14.6 |