Some tail or some head

Often times I find that head and tail don't put out enough. Some times I just want more. I don't want to create aliases for them because there are times that I just need it to work normally and I am too lazy to absolute path to remove the alias.

This is how I am able to me some tail and some head with more.

In my home I have a bin directory that is just for my bin scripts, but you could put this in /usr/local/bin/ if you like.

I wanted one script that does both, so I use basename and the built in BASH test replacement operation to strip the command down to either head or tail. I created the script as somehead and then made a symlink that points to it called sometail.

$(basename ${0//some/}) -n $(( $(tput lines) - 3 ))

Notice this uses tput to get the number of lines in the terminal and then subtracts three, just so it does not overflow the screen and you get an idea of where the output started.

Remember to

chmod 755 somehead
ln -s somehead sometail