Subject: tail -c +N / --bytes +N manpage wrong (off by 1)

From: "Martin Taibr" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Sep 2020 17:50:50 +0200 (CEST)

Currently the manpage says:

-c, --bytes=[+]NUM

              output the last NUM bytes; or use -c +NUM to output starting 
with byte NUM of each file

Most (all?) hex editors number bytes from 0 so it's natural to assume tail -
c +0 will print the entire file, tail -c +1 will cut off the first byte and 
so on. That's not the case, tail seems to "index" bytes from 1, not 0, so +0
and +1 both print the entire file.

I'd suggest

1) the manpage should mention counting starts from 1 (so you need to add 1 
when copy pasting offsets from most other programs)

2) +0 should print a warning since its usage indicates the user likely 
thinks tail counts from 0

3) -n / --lines docs should be changed to match (though counting lines from 
1 is more common)