tail +123 or tail -n +123?

[Gérard Milmeister]

On Sun, 2006-04-16 at 08:28 -0500, Aaron Konstam wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-04-16 at 12:39 +0200, wwp wrote:
> > Hello all,
> > 
> > 
> > since I've installed FC5 (was using FC3 before), many self-installer scripts
> > fail to install because of tail. They use `tail +123` but the tail version
> > that comes w/ FC5 only accepts `tail -n +123`. Is that a change in tail's
> > command-line or a bug in this version? I work around this issue by editing the
> > scripts and inserting a -n, but would like to know what's the problem here.
> > Any one?
> > 
> Well it looks like you got it right. No one bothered to change the man
> poage but in order to start displaying a file from line 3 you needs to
> enter:
> tail -n +3 file

Yes, the manpage is not up-to-date, however 'info tail' is.
The new behaviour is standard compliant, to revert to the
previous behaviour you can also set the environment variable
_POSIX2_VERSION=199209.
-- 
Gérard Milmeister
Langackerstrasse 49
CH-8057 Zürich