head tail

bash-3.00# cat -n g | head -5
1 root console Apr 26 18:52 (:0)
2 root pts/3 Apr 26 18:53 (:0.0)
3 root pts/4 Apr 27 00:09 (:0.0)
4 .:
5 fi
bash-3.00# cat -n g | head -5 | tail -1
5 fi
bash-3.00# cat -n g | tail +5 | head -1
5 fi

$ less +F production.log

Important
log
information
here

Waiting for data... (interrupt to abort)

When not to use less

When you need to watch multiple files at the same time, tail -f can actually give you a better output. It will show you something like this:

$ tail -f *.txt

==> file1.txt <==
content for first file

==> file2.txt <==
content for second file

==> file3.txt <==
content for third file

When a change happens, it prints the file name and the new content, which is quite handy.

With less, it would be like this:

$ less +F *.txt

content for first file

It shows the content of just one file at a time. If you want to see what’s happening in the second file, you need to first Ctrl-c to go to normal mode, then type :n to go to the next buffer, and then F again to go back to the watching mode.