tail +123 or tail -n +123?

[Aaron Konstam]

On Sun, 2006-04-16 at 16:01 +0200, wwp wrote:
> Hello Gérard,
> 
> 
> On Sun, 16 Apr 2006 15:18:56 +0200 Gérard Milmeister <gemi at bluewin.ch> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 2006-04-16 at 08:28 -0500, Aaron Konstam wrote:
> > > On Sun, 2006-04-16 at 12:39 +0200, wwp wrote:
> > > > Hello all,
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > since I've installed FC5 (was using FC3 before), many self-installer
> > > > scripts fail to install because of tail. They use `tail +123` but the
> > > > tail version that comes w/ FC5 only accepts `tail -n +123`. Is that a
> > > > change in tail's command-line or a bug in this version? I work around
> > > > this issue by editing the scripts and inserting a -n, but would like to
> > > > know what's the problem here. Any one?
> > > > 
> > > Well it looks like you got it right. No one bothered to change the man
> > > poage but in order to start displaying a file from line 3 you needs to
> > > enter:
> > > tail -n +3 file
> > 
> > Yes, the manpage is not up-to-date, however 'info tail' is.
> > The new behaviour is standard compliant, to revert to the
> > previous behaviour you can also set the environment variable
> > _POSIX2_VERSION=199209.
> 
> Thanks for the clarification and for the tip :-).
Except on my FC5 system info tail has the same error as man tail. Any
explanations out there?
-- 
Aaron Konstam <akonstam at sbcglobal.net>