linuxbashprintingskip

Print a file, skipping the first X lines, in Bash

I have a very long file which I want to print, skipping the first 1,000,000 lines, for example.

I looked into the cat man page, but I did not see any option to do this. I am looking for a command to do this or a simple Bash program.

Solution

  • Use tail. Some examples:

    $ tail file.log
< Last 10 lines of file.log >

    To SKIP the first N lines:

    $ tail -n +<N+1> <filename>
< filename, excluding first N lines. >

    For instance, to skip the first 10 lines:

    $ tail -n +11 file.log
< file.log, starting at line 11, after skipping the first 10 lines. >

    To see the last N lines, omit the "+":

    $ tail -n <N> <filename>
< last N lines of file. >