ahead: filter the first lines ('head') of the input and print them Parameters: -n [count]: only the first 'count' lines will be forwarded to the output -e [expression]: only the first lines will be printed that give !0 result with this expression (integer result != 0). The 'line' runtime variable contains the line. -until: default mode, lines are forwarded until the expression is >0 -while: lines are forwarded while the expression is >0 Examples: afind *.txt | acat | ahead -n 10 -> pint the first 10 lines of each text file ... | ahead -e "strlen(line) > 10" -> print the first lines until the line length reaches 10 (the expression quoted, otherwise the command line interpreter would process the '>' and forward the results into the file '10') ... | ahead -e "strpos(line, 'apple') != 0" -> print the first lines that contain the "apple" string ... | ahead -e "line []= 'apple'" -> the same as the previous one