difference in the tail command between most Linux distros and Fedora

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 10:16:40AM -0500, bob 295 wrote:
> If you look at the reference for the tail command it talks to the option to 
> specify a +n  so that tail starts n lines from beginning of file.
> 
> As an experiment create a 5 line text file called bob.    Then
> 
> tail +3 bob 
> 
> should dump lines 3-5.  
> 
> Except on Fedora systems.     Apparently they have a different flavor of tail 
> which doesn't recognize the + sign and tries to open a file call "+3".
> 
> Does anyone have any history as to why this might be so?    Any work arounds?

I believe the +n has been deprecated for a long time, and may simply
have been dropped by now.

You should be doing:

tail -n +3 bob

Tha man page on Debian stable doesn't even mention being able to leave
out -n, and it was released a number of years ago.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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