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head and tail on Linux: Show First and Last Lines of Files

· dinesh
head tail command linux - custom-headtail-featured.png

head and tail on Linux are the fastest way to peek into huge files without opening an editor — configs, CSV headers, and the last errors after a deploy. This guide covers line counts and bytes; for live follow use tail -f (see our dedicated follow-log tutorial).

See: tail -f follow,
wc,
grep.

First N lines with head

Default is 10 lines — override with -n.

bashhead
head -n 25 /var/log/syslog
head -n 1 data.csv   # header row
head -n
first lines

Last N lines with tail

Mirror of head for the end of the file — common before incident review.

bashtail
tail -n 50 /var/log/nginx/error.log
tail -n
last lines

By bytes

-c limits bytes — useful for binary sniffing (small prefix only).

bashbytes
head -c 200 unknown.bin | xxd | head
head -c
bytes

Pipelines

head tail with grep reduces noise before you open the full file.

NoteNegative line counts (tail -n +2) mean “start from line 2” — handy to drop a header before processing.
pipe
grep

Quick Reference

  • Top: head -n N file
  • Bottom: tail -n N file
  • Follow live: tail -f (separate guide)

Related tutorials

Diagrams are original illustrations by Gnome IT Solutions. Tutorial text © Gnome IT Solutions.