On Monday 17 March 2008, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Shai Berger wrote:
> > That is, +3 is treated as a file-name instead of as --lines=+3,
> > like it always had,
>
> That behavior is intentional. Please see this FAQ entry for more
> information:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/#Old-tail-plus-N-syntax-now-fails
>
I think that's a design mistake, but there's no use arguing about it on this
bug, is there?...
>
> > and like the docs still say it should.
>
> Where do the docs say that it should? Perhaps something was missed in
> the updates. If so then they should be fixed.
>
Upon second reading, they don't really say so, but I still think they don't
say strongly enough that it isn't so; that is, if I didn't already have the
expectation that tail +N should work, I might have read these lines
differently:
-n, --lines=N output the last N lines, instead of the last 10;
or use +N to output lines starting with the Nth
And perhaps contributing to my confusion was the fact that tail -N still works
(although it is currently not documented in the man or --help); actually, I
had misread -n in the lines above as -N.
Can you add a line -- preferably on the -n option -- in the man and --help
text. like "note that tail -N is deprecated and tail +N obsoleted"?
Normally, I would prefer documentation to not talk about options that aren't
there, but these two were the most common use patterns for the tail utility,
as far as I know.
Thanks,
Shai.
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