tail/head all line except X last/first Lines

Question

for example i have this file :

cat myfile
1
2
3
4
5

i want to print all lines except first 2 line . output should be like this :

tail -n $(( $(wc -l myfile | awk '{print $1}') - 2 )) myfile
3
4
5

Yes , out put is correct. but there is a problem , we have 5 line in this sample file right ? if i use more that 5 in this command output should be empty but it is not !!!

tail -n $(( $(wc -l myfile | awk '{print $1}') - NUMBER )) myfile

this outout should be empty but it is not

tail -n $(( $(wc -l myfile | awk '{print $1}') - 8 )) myfile

1
2
3
4
5

myfile can contain X lines... Thanks for help

Solution 1

tail -n+3 outputs the last lines starting from the third one.

Solution 2

I know this is old, but for posterity.

given the input (as posted by OP),

cat << EOF > myfile
1
2
3
4
5
EOF

you can solve the problem using awk

awk 'FNR > 2 {print $1}' myfile

will yield desired result

3
4
5

tested with awk version (GNU Awk 4.1.4, API: 1.1 (GNU MPFR 4.0.1, GNU MP 6.1.2))

Comments

[network]

line number are variable and i dont know how many line there are . want to keep all except last 3 lines

[choroba]

That's not what you described in the question, but head -n-3 should give you what you need.

[network]

i have edit question. but this file is output of a script and we dont know how many line have ...

[choroba]

You don't need to know the number of lines.

[network]

tried is it not what i need for example if i want have all line except 8 lines but i have 5 line only .so output should be empty :tail -n-8 myfile 1 2 3 4 5

[choroba]

@behnam: Use + with tail, not -, as I did.

[pestophagous]

slightly tangential comment: i just came across a util that is similar to tail called Debian buthead, which more people should have the chance to enjoy: manpages.debian.org/jessie/buthead/buthead.1.en.html (it outputs all "but head"... as in "all but N lines from the head")