Displaying the first few lines of a file: head

To display the first 10 lines of a text file use the command:

   head filename

Examples

To display the first 10 lines of a file:

   head /usr/local/doc/vi.txt

This displays the first 10 lines of the file vi.txt which is in the directory /usr/local/doc/

To display the first 5 lines of several files:

   head -5 *.xdh

This displays, one after the other, the first 5 lines of each file with the extension .xdh in the current directory.

The first line of each file is shown as:

   ==> filename <==