Content Comparison

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NAME
    cat - concatenate files and print on the standard output
SYNOPSIS
    cat [OPTION]... [FILE]...
DESCRIPTION
    Concatenate FILE(s) to standard output.
    With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

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With no options, head shows the first 10 lines of its input and tail shows the last 10 lines. You can use the -n option followed by a number to specify how many lines lines to view, or just put the number you want after a dash (e.g. -5 for 5 lines or -1 for 1 line).

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But what if you want to see lines in the middle of a file? Here's where a special feature of tail comes in handy. If you use tail and put a plus sign (+) in front of the number (with or without the -n option), tail will start its output at that line.

Let's pipe line-numbered output from cat to tail to see how this works:. Note we use cat -n to provide input with line numbers because neither head nor tail has line numbering options.

cat -n haiku.txt | tail -n 75   # display the last 75 lines of haiku.txt
cat -n haiku.txt | tail -n +75  # display text in haiku.txt starting at 
line  7 cat -n haiku.txt | tail +10    # display text in haiku.txt starting at line 10              line 5
cat -n haiku.txt | tail +6     # display text in haiku.txt starting at 
                                 line 6

When you use the tail -n +<integer> syntax it will display all output starting from that line to the end of its input. So to view only a few lines starting at a specified line number, pipe the output to head:

# display 2 lines of haiku.txt starting at line 9
cat -n haiku.txt | tail -n +9 | head -2
cat -n haiku.txt | tail +9 | head -n 2

cat -n haiku.txt | head -10 | tail -2

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cat -n haiku.txt | tail -n +5 | head -n 3
cat -n haiku.txt | tail +5 | head -3

cat -n haiku.txt | head -7 | tail -3

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