head and tail in Linux CLI - Interactive Code Practice

Practice - 5 Tasks

1fill in blank

easy

Complete the command to display the first 5 lines of a file named 'log.txt'.

Linux CLI

head -n [1] log.txt

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A20

B10

C5

D1

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Using -n 10 shows 10 lines instead of 5.

Forgetting the -n option.

The head command with -n 5 shows the first 5 lines of the file.

2fill in blank

medium

Complete the command to display the last 3 lines of a file named 'data.csv'.

Linux CLI

tail -n [1] data.csv

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A5

B3

C10

D1

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Using -n 5 shows 5 lines instead of 3.

Confusing head with tail.

The tail command with -n 3 shows the last 3 lines of the file.

3fill in blank

hard

Fix the error in the command to show the first 8 lines of 'report.txt'.

Linux CLI

head [1] 8 report.txt

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A-n

B-c

C-l

D-f

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Using -c which shows bytes instead of lines.

Using -f which follows the file continuously.

The correct option to specify number of lines in head is -n. The option -c is for bytes, -f is for following the file.

4fill in blank

hard

Fill both blanks to create a command that shows lines 5 to 10 of 'file.txt' using head and tail.

Linux CLI

head -n [1] file.txt | tail -n [2]

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A10

B5

C6

D15

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Using head -n 6 instead of 10.

Using tail -n 5 instead of 6.

First, head -n 10 gets the first 10 lines. Then, tail -n 6 gets the last 6 lines of those 10, which are lines 5 to 10.

5fill in blank

hard

Fill all three blanks to create a command that shows lines containing 'error' (case-insensitive) from the last 4 lines of the first 20 lines of 'access.log'.

Linux CLI

head -n [1] access.log | tail -n [2] | grep -i [3]

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A20

B4

C"error"

D10

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Using wrong numbers for head or tail options.

Forgetting quotes around the grep pattern.

This command first gets the first 20 lines with head -n 20, then the last 4 lines of those with tail -n 4, and finally filters lines containing 'error' (case-insensitive) with grep -i "error".