Is there a way to simulate the *nix tail command on the Windows command line? I have a file and I want a way to snip off the first n lines of text. For example:
D:\>type file.txt
line one
line two
line three
D:\>*[call to tail]* > result.txt
D:\>type result.txt
line two
line three
No exact equivalent. However there exist a native DOS command "more" that has a +n option that will start outputting the file after the nth line:
DOS Prompt:
C:\>more +2 myfile.txt
The above command will output everything after the first 2 lines.
This is actually the inverse of Unix head:
Unix console:
root@server:~$ head -2 myfile.txt
The above command will print only the first 2 lines of the file.
tail starts counting from the end of file. So, tail -2 will print the last two lines. –
Foofaraw -2 is not a negative. It's just a shorthand version of -n 2 (number of lines). Unfortunately, far too many implementations of tail do not support -2, making it very inconsistent with accompanying head implementations which do. It has annoyed me one too many times. –
Foofaraw head -n -2 which is different from head -n 2. But with tail, the latter doesn't exist. –
Rorqual tail also support a "how many lines from the top" behavior by prefixing the number with +. So regarding the example above, to get everything after the second line (e.g. the third line and below), use tail -n +3 –
Eusebiaeusebio IF you have Windows PowerShell installed (I think it's included since XP) you can just run from cmd.exe:
Head Command:
powershell -command "& {Get-Content *filename* -TotalCount *n*}"
Tail Command:
powershell -command "& {Get-Content *filename* | Select-Object -last *n*}"
or, directly from PowerShell:
Get-Content *filename* -TotalCount *n*
Get-Content *filename* | Select-Object -last *n*
update
PowerShell 3.0 (Windows 8 and higher) added Tail command with alias Last.
Head and First aliases to TotalCount were also added.
So, commands can be re-written as
Get-Content *filename* -Head *n*
Get-Content *filename* -Tail *n*
head instead of tail? –
Rosamariarosamond Get-Content has a tail command now. For example, Get-content -Tail 5 file.txt will print the last five lines of file.txt. Thanks for updating your answer btw. –
Rosamariarosamond No exact equivalent. However there exist a native DOS command "more" that has a +n option that will start outputting the file after the nth line:
DOS Prompt:
C:\>more +2 myfile.txt
The above command will output everything after the first 2 lines.
This is actually the inverse of Unix head:
Unix console:
root@server:~$ head -2 myfile.txt
The above command will print only the first 2 lines of the file.
tail starts counting from the end of file. So, tail -2 will print the last two lines. –
Foofaraw -2 is not a negative. It's just a shorthand version of -n 2 (number of lines). Unfortunately, far too many implementations of tail do not support -2, making it very inconsistent with accompanying head implementations which do. It has annoyed me one too many times. –
Foofaraw head -n -2 which is different from head -n 2. But with tail, the latter doesn't exist. –
Rorqual tail also support a "how many lines from the top" behavior by prefixing the number with +. So regarding the example above, to get everything after the second line (e.g. the third line and below), use tail -n +3 –
Eusebiaeusebio Powershell:
Get-Content C:\logs\result.txt -Tail 10
Get-Content C:\logs\result.txt -wait (monitor the tail)
more /e filename.txt P n
where n = the number of rows to display. Works fast and is exactly like head command.
This is a total hack but if it's a huge file that you want to just examine the format, header, etc. and you're looking for a solution you can always just redirect the 'more' output to a new file and CTRL-C quickly. The output rows can't be controlled precisely and you will most likely kill it in the middle of a line of output but it's a cheap way of grabbing a small bit of an otherwise unusable file.
Ex.
C:\more test.csv > test.txt
^C C:\more test.txt
line 1
line 2
etc...... C:\
Well, this will do it, but it's about as fast as it looks (roughly O(n*m), where n is the number of lines to display and m is the total number of lines in the file):
for /l %l in (1,1,10) do @for /f "tokens=1,2* delims=:" %a in ('findstr /n /r "^" filename ^| findstr /r "^%l:"') do @echo %b
Where "10" is the number of lines you want to print, and "filename" is the name of the file.
head. –
Pungy (expr) > out.txt - when sending the results to a file, or you'll only get the last line. Or append - expr >> out.txt. –
Salol When using more +n that Matt already mentioned, to avoid pauses in long files, try this:
more +1 myfile.txt > con
When you redirect the output from more, it doesn't pause - and here you redirect to the console. You can similarly redirect to some other file like this w/o the pauses of more if that's your desired end result. Use > to redirect to file and overwrite it if it already exists, or >> to append to an existing file. (Can use either to redirect to con.)
you can also use Git bash where head and tail are emulated as well
Get-content -Tail n file.txt with powershell is the only thing that comes close to tail in linux.
The Get-Content *filename* | Select-Object -last *n* suggested above loads/parse the whole thing. Needless to say, it was not happy with my 10GB log file... The -Tail option does start by the end of the file.
-Tail 100 until I cancelled it. The file was slightly below 800MB –
Knowledgeable in PS try to use command:
Select -Last 1
This command can be pipelined also.
Example to get first line:
type .\out.txt | Select -Last 1
or to get the first line:
type .\out.txt | Select -First 1
If you want the head command, one easy way to get it is to install Cygwin. Then you'll have all the UNIX tools at your disposal.
If that isn't a good solution, then you can try using findstr and do a search for the end-of-line indicator.
findstr on MSDN: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490907.aspx
Here is a fast native head command that gives you the first 9 lines in DOS.
findstr /n "." myfile.txt | findstr "^.:"
The first 2 characters on each line will be the line number.
There is a resource kit that can be downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/confirmation.aspx?familyId=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&displayLang=en
It contains a tail.exe tool but it is only compatible with some Windows versions
(Copied from this post: Tail command for windows)
I have not tried extracting a range, but I was able to get a line using the following DOS command:
find /N " " *.log|find "[6]"
Since most files contain spaces, this command pulls every line from all LOG files and basically numbers them starting from 1 for each file. The numbered results are then piped into the second FIND command which looks for the line tagged as number 6.
FWIW, for those just needing to snip off an indeterminate number of records from the head of the file, more > works well. This is useful just to have a smaller file to work with in the early stages of developing something.
There's a free head utility on this page that you can use. I haven't tried it yet.
set /p line= < file.csv
echo %line%
it will return first line of your file in cmd Windows in variable %line%.
As a contemporary answer, if running Windows 10 you can use the "Linux Subsystem for Windows".
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
This will allow you to run native linux commands from within windows and thus run tail exactly how you would in linux.
To keep the 1st few lines of text (head):
set n=<lines>
for /l %a in (1,1,%n%) do (
for /f "tokens=*" %i in ('find /v /n "" ^< test1.txt ^| find "[%a]"') do (
REM ove prefixed line numbers:
set a=%i
set a=!a:*]=!
echo:!a!)
)
To discard the 1st few lines of text (tail):
set n=<lines>
set file=<file.txt>
set /a n=n+1 >nul
for /f "tokens=*" %i in ('find /v /c "" ^< %file%') do set total=%i
for /l %a in (%n%,1,%total%) do (
for /f "tokens=*" %i in ('find /v /n "" ^< %file% ^| find "[%a]"') do (
REM ove prefixed line numbers:
set a=%i
set a=!a:*]=!
echo:!a!)
)
Note:
The head function can also be achieved by fsutil
The tail function can also be achieved by fc & comp
Tested on Win 10 cmd
Warning, using the batch file for, tokens, and delims capability on unknown text input can be a disaster due to the special interpretation of chars like &, !, <, etc. Such methods should be reserved for only predictable text.
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headshow only the first n lines instead of leaving them out? – Potmanheadcommand, but the desired output looked like it was wantingtail. It looks like the answers are aboutheadand nottail. – Rosamariarosamondtail, however the title saidhead– Renee*[call to tail]* 2 > result.txt, in which case it is equivalent totail, or*[call to tail]* 1 > result.txt, in which case it is not. – Wehrle