dear lazyweb

[rone]

I want to run a command that will give me the contents of a file, except for the last two lines.  I know that tail -2 filename will give me the last two lines of a file, and head -2 filename will give me the first two lines of a file.  Now, tail +2 filename will give me contents of a file, starting with line 2.  It's not a symmetrical option, but i can at least work with that.  However, the head command lacks this elegant mode; otherwise, i would infer that head +3 filename would give me what i want.  Is there a simple command that can do what i want?  I figure i can implement this in some fugly perl script, but that is not the damn point.

Comments

assuming you're using bash.

[rwx.livejournal.com]

head -$((`wc -l foo | cut -c-8` -2)) foo

Re: assuming you're using bash.

[rwx.livejournal.com]

also supposing you were speaking metaphorically when you said 'simple.'

Re: assuming you're using bash.

[dagbrown.livejournal.com]

But that makes two passes through the file and forks an unnecessary cut!

Here, still in two passes, but golfed a bit:

head -$((`wc -l < foo`-2)) foo

And what the hell, here's the fugly perl anyway. One pass, but Perl:

  my @queue;
  while(<>) {
    unshift @queue, $_;
    print pop @queue if scalar(@queue) > 2;
  }

Re: assuming you're using bash.

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

There are no Fuggly Perl Code!!!

Only Fuggly Whiners about solution spaces...