#define private public - Claus Brod on Windows (16 Jun 2009)

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---+++ [[DefinePrivatePublic20090616HeadUtilityOnWindows][<tt>head</tt> replacement on Windows]] (16 Jun 2009)

<summary>
A co-worker needed to convert a Cygwin-dependent script to something that runs on a bare-bones 
Windows system. The interesting part of the task was finding a replacement for the good ol' 
[[http://www.manpagez.com/man/1/head/][<tt>head</tt>]] command-line utility.
</summary>

Fortunately, this is fairly simple using a few lines of <nop>VBScript and the 
[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Script_Host][Windows Scripting Host]].
First, here's the <nop>VBScript code:
<pre>
lines = WScript.Arguments(0)
Do Until WScript.stdin.AtEndOfStream Or lines=0
  WScript.Echo WScript.stdin.ReadLine
  lines = lines-1
Loop
</pre>

This is an extremely stripped-down version of <tt>head</tt>'s original functionality, of course. For
example, the code above can only read from standard input, and things like command-line argument 
validation and error handling are left as an exercise for the reader :D

Assuming you'd save the above into a file called =head.vbs=, this is how you can
display the first three lines of a text file called =someinputfile.txt=:
<pre>
   type someinputfile.txt | cscript /nologo head.vbs 3
</pre>

Enjoy!

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