Re: tail +n does not work under Linux?

[Christophe LYON]

Thank you Bob for your clarification.


On 11.05.2009 20:28, Bob Proulx wrote:
> It is only because 'n' and 'N' are different cases of the same letter
> that people's minds play tricks on them.

Indeed.
Maybe a slight rewording of the man page could highlight this?
(eg add another reference to the info page for this trick)

> > But I still don't see where '-3' is documented?
> Matthew quoted the section of the documentation that describes this in
> his mail.  Please read that section again.
Oh, you are right. Sorry for having overlooked this.

After reading those 2 paragraphs several times, there are still a few 
things not completely clear:
- tail -COUNT is described as obsolete, but supported when it does not 
conflict with the new standard. But has _POSIX2_VERSION any influence on 
this support?
- tail +COUNT is supported on "older systems". Older than what? How do I 
know whether I am using a "older system" or not?

Is there a way to know which default POSIX version is used by coreutils? 
I have check the build logs, and saw nothing.

> The -COUNT style is different from the +COUNT style.  Those are two
> different and independent issues.  For a while the -COUNT style was
> removed but now it has returned.
>
> As additional information on this please read the FAQ entry on it here.
>   http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/#Old-tail-plus-N-syntax-now-fails

This for this additional, which actually helped me understand the 
problem better.

Christophe.