head

Output the first part of files.

$ head

Files

Number of lines (-n)Number of bytes (-c)

Examples

# Show first 10 lines (default)
head file.txt

# Show first 20 lines
head -n 20 file.txt

# Show first 100 bytes
head -c 100 file.txt

# Show first 5 lines of multiple files
head -n 5 file1.txt file2.txt