GNU bug report logs - #6605
+N lines broken with /usr/bin/tail (GNU coreutils) 7.4

Previous Next

Package: coreutils;

Reported by: Forest Oakwater <forest_oakwater <at> yahoo.com>

Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 16:30:04 UTC

Severity: normal

Done: Bob Proulx <bob <at> proulx.com>

Bug is archived. No further changes may be made.

Full log

View this message in rfc822 format

From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> CS.UCLA.EDU>
To: forest_oakwater <at> yahoo.com
Cc: bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org
Subject: bug#6605: +N lines broken with /usr/bin/tail (GNU coreutils) 7.4
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:46:55 -0700

On 07/10/10 12:53, Davide Brini wrote:

> The "tail +2" syntax is obsolete; probably the recent versions of coreutils
> (which 7.4 is not, anyway) dropped support for it.

It's not just obsolete: it's incompatible with POSIX 1003.1-2001,
which is why it was dropped a while ago.  You can bring back
support for "tail +2" by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in
your environment; this is documented in the coreutils manual.
But it's probably better to update those dusty old shell scripts
to use the POSIX-specified syntax.
This bug report was last modified 13 years and 296 days ago.

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.