How to combine `cat` and `head`?

You can combine cat and head to display the first few lines of a file or to manipulate the output of multiple files. Here’s how you can do it:

Basic Usage

To display the first few lines of a single file using cat and head, you can use the following command:

cat filename.txt | head -n 10

This command will display the first 10 lines of filename.txt.

Example with Multiple Files

If you want to concatenate multiple files and then display the first few lines of the combined output, you can do:

cat file1.txt file2.txt | head -n 10

This command will concatenate file1.txt and file2.txt, then display the first 10 lines of the combined output.

Using head Directly

However, it's worth noting that you can achieve similar results directly with head without using cat:

head -n 10 filename.txt

This command directly displays the first 10 lines of filename.txt.

Summary

Combining cat and head is useful for specific scenarios, especially when dealing with multiple files or when you want to manipulate the output further before displaying it.