--- layout: page author: Agostino Monti category-page: advanced category-title: Advanced commands tags: head tail text file title: head-tail ---

`head`

The head command reads the first few lines of any text given to it as an input and writes them to standard output. If more than one input file is provided, head will return the first ten lines from each file, precede each set of lines by the name of the file and separate each set of lines by one vertical space.

`tail`

The tail command is similar to the head command except that it reads the final lines in files rather than the first lines.

Examples

      head file1.txt 

      head file1.txt file2.txt 

      tail fail1.txt

flags

The -n option can be used followed by an integer indicating the number of lines desired. -n is a very tolerant option, it is not necessary for the integer to directly follow it without a space in between. In fact, the letter n does not even need to be used at all. Just the hyphen and the integer (with no intervening space) are sufficient to tell head how many lines to return.
Examples
```
        head -n15 file1.txt 

        head -n   15 file1.txt 

        head -15 file1.txt
```
The output from other commands can be sent via a pipe (represented by the vertical bar character) to head to use as its input. The following sends the output from the ls command to head, which, in turn, displays the first ten lines of the output that it receives from ls
Examples
```
         ls | head 
```