There is a backward-compatibility problem with supporting "tail -2" with any
number of extra arguments, since (for example) "tail -2c 20" has a different
meaning in traditional "tail" than you might think. To avoid confusion, "tail
-2" is not encouraged when using non-traditional features (in your case, two or
more FILE arguments). Since "tail -n2 FILE1 FILE2 ..." suffices, it's not clear
that it'd be worth the aggravation to rethink this.
- bug#30504: bug tail -2 FILE1 FILE1 - tail: option used in inv... Mike Brescia
- bug#30504: bug tail -2 FILE1 FILE1 - tail: option used i... Paul Eggert
