Skipping a Header in a File
Problem
You have a file with one or more header lines and you need to process just the data, and skip the header.
Solution
Use the tail command with a special argument. For example, to skip the first line of a file:
$ tail -n +2 lines Line 2 Line 4 Line 5
Discussion
An argument to tail, which is a number
starting dash (-), will specify a line offset relative to the end
of the file. So tail -n 10
file shows the last 10 lines of
file, which also happens to be the default if you
don’t specify anything. But a number starting with a plus (+) sign is an offset relative to the top of the
file. Thus, tail+1
file gives you the entire file, the same as
cat. +2
skips
the first line, and so on.
See Also
man tail
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