Bug 199741

Summary: tail(1) fails to parse plus-sign argument, reports error
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: David Rabson <tla>
Component: coreutilsAssignee: Tim Waugh <twaugh>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 5CC: meyering, tla
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2006-07-24 09:13:49 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description David Rabson 2006-07-21 17:58:19 UTC
Description of problem:

  tail(1) fails to parse plus-sign argument; reports error

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

  5.93

How reproducible:

  /bin/echo "bad\ngood" | tail +2


should yield "good," instead gives an error message about not finding
a file called "+2".



  
Actual results:
  tail: cannot open `+2' for reading: No such file or directory

  
Expected results:
  good


Additional info:

It's possible this originates in an argument-parsing library.

This is an urgent bug on submitter's system, since it breaks
hundreds of local shell scripts.

Comment 1 David Rabson 2006-07-21 18:03:26 UTC
Correction to procedure to reproduce bug:

/bin/echo -e "bad\ngood" | tail +2


--



Comment 2 Tim Waugh 2006-07-24 09:13:49 UTC
The correct syntax for this is "tail -n +2 f".  You can get the old syntax
(which does not conform to the current POSIX spec) back like this:

export _POSIX2_VERSION=199209

See the info page aobut this:

  info coreutils "Standards Conformance"