How do I read the first line of a file using cat?
Solution 1:
You don't need cat.
head -1 file
will work fine.
Solution 2:
You don't, use head instead.
head -n 1 file.txt
Solution 3:
There are many different ways:
sed -n 1p file
head -n 1 file
awk 'NR==1' file
Solution 4:
You could use cat file.txt | head -1, but it would probably be better to use head directly, as in head -1 file.txt.
Solution 5:
This may not be possible with cat. Is there a reason you have to use cat?
If you simply need to do it with a bash command, this should work for you:
head -n 1 file.txt