Re: Missing "tail" feature, bug?

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

>From the documentation for coreutils:

,----[ (coreutils)tail invocation ]
|    On older systems, `tail' supports an obsolete option
| `-COUNTOPTIONS', which is recognized only if it is specified first.
| COUNT is a decimal number optionally followed by a size letter (`b',
| `k', `m') as in `-c', or `l' to mean count by lines, or other option
| letters (`cfqv').  Some older `tail' implementations also support an
| obsolete option `+COUNT' with the same meaning as `-+COUNT'.  POSIX
| 1003.1-2001 (*note Standards conformance::) does not allow these
| options; use `-c COUNT' or `-n COUNT' instead.
`----

And from another part of the documentation:

,----[ (coreutils)Standards conformance ]
|    Newer versions of POSIX are occasionally incompatible with older
| versions.  For example, older versions of POSIX required the command
| `sort +1' to sort based on the second and succeeding fields in each
| input line, but starting with POSIX 1003.1-2001 the same command is
| required to sort the file named `+1', and you must instead use the
| command `sort -k 2' to get the field-based sort.
| 
|    The GNU utilities normally conform to the version of POSIX that is
| standard for your system.  To cause them to conform to a different
| version of POSIX, define the `_POSIX2_VERSION' environment variable to
| a value of the form YYYYMM specifying the year and month the standard
| was adopted.  Two values are currently supported for `_POSIX2_VERSION':
| `199209' stands for POSIX 1003.2-1992, and `200112' stands for POSIX
| 1003.1-2001.  For example, if you are running older software that
| assumes an older version of POSIX and uses `sort +1', `head -1', or
| `tail +1', you can work around the compatibility problems by setting
| `_POSIX2_VERSION=199209' in your environment.
`----