The head command reads the first few lines of any text given to it as an input and writes them to standard output (which, by default, is the display screen).

head's basic syntax is:

head [options] [file(s)]

The square brackets indicate that the enclosed items are optional. By default, head returns the first ten lines of each file name that is provided to it.

For example, the following will display the first ten lines of the file namedaardvark in the current directory (i.e., the directory in which the user is currently working):

head aardvark