After read the article... all the reasoning... I think I could go with this for such reasons exposed: perl -ne 'last if $. > 500; /mail/ && print' access.l

After read the article... all the reasoning... I think I could go with this for such reasons exposed: perl -ne 'last if $. > 500; /mail/ && print' access.log When you're done with the part after the &&, remove the 'last if $. > 500' For me, the most useful use of (gnu) cat, is cat -A weird.file It saves my day or solves weird issues (X-files) with files generated by (not so) junior sysadmins, copy/pastes, end of lines, invisible diffs, etc... many times each year.