How do I read the first line of a file using cat

Question

User · Answer

There are many different ways   sed -n 1p file head -n 1 file awk  NR  1  file

User · Answer

You don t  use head instead   head -n 1 file txt

User · Answer

Adding one more obnoxious alternative to the list  perl -pe    lt  1  last  file   or  perl -pe    lt  1  last   lt  file   or cat file   perl -pe    lt  1  last

User · Answer

Use the below command to get the first row from a CSV file or any file formats   head -1 FileName csv

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

You dont need any external command if you have bash v4    lt  file txt mapfile -n1  amp  amp  echo   MAPFILE 0     or if you really want cat  cat file txt   mapfile -n1  amp  amp  echo   MAPFILE 0

User · Answer

I m surprised that this question has been around as long as it has  and nobody has provided the pre-mapfile built-in approach yet   IFS  read -r first line  lt file      puts the first line of the file in the variable expanded by   first line   easy as that   Moreover  because read is built into bash and this usage requires no subshell  it s significantly more efficient than approaches involving subprocesses such as head or awk

User · Answer

There is plenty of good answer to this question  Just gonna drop another one into the basket if you wish to do it with lolcat lolcat FileName csv   head -n 1

User · Answer

You don t need cat     head -1 file   will work fine

User · Answer

cat alone may not be possible  but if you don t want to use head this works    cat  lt file gt    awk  NR    1

User · Answer

You could use cat file txt   head -1  but it would probably be better to use head directly  as in head -1 file txt

[bash] How do I read the first line of a file using cat?

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