bug#8231: Bug in the linux command: tail

[Bob Proulx]

Roger N. Clark wrote:
> Thank you for the quick reply.  I'm fine with needing to say -n -3.
> Perhaps the man page needs to be clearer, so should be changed from
> the current:
>        -n, --lines=N
>               output the last N lines, instead of the last 10
> to something like:
>        -n N, --lines=N
>               output the last N lines, instead of the last 10
> A test showed no difference between -n -3 and -n 3.

The man page since 2009-05-20 already says:

       -n, --lines=K
              output the last K lines, instead of the last 10; or use
              -n +K to output lines starting with the Kth

Eric made that change here:

  
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=commitdiff;h=c43333419bad3408529bb356cd167f91b6d4f6b2

I will take credit for suggesting changing the letter here:

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2009-05/msg00124.html

But Matthew Woehlke suggested the present K form:

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2009-05/msg00200.html

And of course Eric did all of the work. :-)

>>> It fails on Ubuntu 10.04 and redhat linux (latest version).

There is a lot of value in stable releases.  I am a big proponent of
them!  But note that while this is already fixed/improved in the
upstream already for some time that this is not a security fix and
therefore will never appear in the long term support stable releases
you are using now.  The whole point and value of stable releases are
that they are stable.

You will need to wait until a newer stable release appears and then
upgrade to it in order to see this.  But that doesn't mean that it
hasn't already been fixed upstream.  (And as a totally gratuitous
remark I will note that Debian's stable release is currently ahead for
a while and does include this change.)

Bob