head - Man Page

output the first part of files

Examples (TL;DR)

Synopsis

head [OPTION]... [FILE]...

Description

Print the first 10 lines of each FILE to standard output. With more than one FILE, precede each with a header giving the file name.

With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

-c,  --bytes=[-]NUM

print the first NUM bytes of each file; with the leading '-', print all but the last NUM bytes of each file

-n,  --lines=[-]NUM

print the first NUM lines instead of the first 10; with the leading '-', print all but the last NUM lines of each file

-q,  --quiet,  --silent

never print headers giving file names

-v,  --verbose

always print headers giving file names

-z,  --zero-terminated

line delimiter is NUL, not newline

--help

display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

NUM may have a multiplier suffix: b 512, kB 1000, K 1024, MB 1000*1000, M 1024*1024, GB 1000*1000*1000, G 1024*1024*1024, and so on for T, P, E, Z, Y, R, Q. Binary prefixes can be used, too: KiB=K, MiB=M, and so on.

Author

Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.

Reporting Bugs

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>

See Also

tail(1)

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/head>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) head invocation'

Referenced By

fetchlog(1), tail(1).

January 2024 GNU coreutils 9.4