Re: Bug in tail 5.96 - "+" argument not recognized

[Paul Eggert]

"Kevin Burtch" <address@hidden> writes:

> Tail version 5.96 (as supplied in Fedora Core 5) has a bug where it
> does not recognize "+" as a command-line argument:
>
>       $ tail +4 /etc/hosts
>       tail: cannot open `+4' for reading: No such file or directory
>
> This does not comply with the supplied man-page:
>
>       If the first character of N (the number of bytes or lines)

But the man page does not say that you can use "tail N FILE".
It does say that you can use "tail -n N FILE", which in this
case would be "tail -n +4 /etc/hosts".

For more on the subject, please consult the documentation, e.g.,
<http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_mono/coreutils.html#tail-invocation>.