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HEAD(1) FreeBSD General Commands Manual HEAD(1) NAME head - display first lines of a file SYNOPSIS head [-qv] [-n count | -c bytes] [file ...] DESCRIPTION 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: -c bytes, --bytes=bytes Print bytes of each of the specified files. -n count, --lines=count Print count lines of each of the specified files. Both count and bytes may also be specified with size suffixes supported by expand_number(3). -q, --quiet, --silent Suppresses printing of headers when multiple files are being examined. -v, --verbose Prepend each file with a header. If more than a single file is specified, or if the -v option is used, each file is preceded by a header consisting of the string "==> XXX <==" where "XXX" is the name of the file. The -q flag disables the printing of the header in all cases. EXIT STATUS The head utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. EXAMPLES 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 SEE ALSO tail(1), expand_number(3) HISTORY The head command appeared in PWB UNIX. FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11 June 12, 2022 FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11