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:

bytes, --bytes=bytes
Print bytes of each of the specified files.
count, --lines=count
Print count lines of each of the specified files.

If 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

tail(1)

The head command appeared in PWB UNIX.

April 10, 2018 Mac OS X 12