title: Why is there no 'hadoop fs -head' shell command?
body: <p>A fast method for inspecting files on HDFS is to use <a href="http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/r0.19.0/hdfs_shell.html#tail" rel="noreferrer">tail</a>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>~$ hadoop fs -tail /path/to/file
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This displays the last kilobyte of data in the file, which is extremely helpful. However, the opposite command <code>head</code> does not appear to be part of the shell command collections. I find this very surprising. </p>
  
  <p>My hypothesis is that since HDFS is built for very fast streaming reads on very large files, there is some access-oriented issue that affects <code>head</code>. This makes me hesitant to do things to access the head. Does anyone have an answer?</p>