echo a file without the first and last lines

Question

Is there a simple way I can echo a file, skipping the first and last lines? I was looking at piping from head into tail, but for those it seems like I would have to know the total lines from the outset. I was also looking at split, but I don't see a way to do it with that either.

Answer 1

Just with sed, without any pipes :

sed '1d;$d' file.txt

NOTE

• 1 mean first line
• d mean delete
• ; is the separator for 2 commands
• $ mean last line

Answer 2

Try this:

tail -n +2 file.txt | head -n -1

doing it the other way round, works the same, of course:

head -n -1 file.txt | tail -n +2