Re: not a bug. feature suggestion for head and tail

[Bob Proulx]

> I propose the added feature for head and tail (GNU textutils) of 
> inverted functioning by the use of the "-x" flag.
[...]
>  > cat file.txt
> 1
> 2
> 3
>  > head -1 file.txt
> 1
>  > head -1 -x file.txt
> 2
> 3

[Note that you should use the POSIX sanctioned '-n 1' instead of '-1'.]

Your suggstion for "head -n 1 -x file.txt" seems identical to using
the already available "tail -n +2 file.txt".  Why is it needed to
cross post this functionality into the other commands?  Among other
things it would not be compatible with POSIX compliant vendor
commands, which leads to portability issues.

Bob