Heads or Tails?

The head command displays the first few lines at the top of a file. It can be useful when you want a quick peek at a large file, as an alternative to opening the file with a text editor. By default, head will show the first ten lines of a file, but you can also tell it how many lines to display. Here are a couple of examples:

head some.file Show first ten lines of some.file.

head -5 some.file Show first five lines of some.file.

The tail Command

The tail command displays the last few lines of a file. Like head, it can save you time, because it's a lot quicker than calling up a file with a text editor and scrolling all the way down to the bottom. By default, tail will show the last ten lines of a file, but you can also tell it how many lines to display:

tail some.file Show last ten lines of s ome.file.
tail -3 some.file Show last three lines of some.file.

Here's a practical example of how to use the tail command. Many Linux programs put diagnostic messages in the /var/syslog/messages file when they run, so this file can get pretty large after a while. To see if your most recent command issued any messages, look at the tail end of this file by entering the tail /var/syslog/messages command.

For more information on the head command, see the head manual.

For more information on the tail command, see the tail manual.

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Comments - most recent first (Please feel free to answer questions posted by others!) sohail     (20 Sep 2016, 02:41) Hi , Tail -f /var/log/messages What does the above command accomplish ? Thanks Sohail. I welcome your comments. However... I am puzzled by many people who say "Please send me the Linux tutorial." This website *is* your Linux Tutorial! Read everything here, learn all you can, ask questions if you like. But don't ask me to send what you already have. :-) NO SPAM! If you post garbage, it will be deleted, and you will be banned. *Name: Email: Notify me about new comments on this page Hide my email *Text:

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