This help topic is for R version 1.9.1. For the current version of R, try https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/utils/html/head.html
head {utils}R Documentation

Return the First or Last Part of an Object

Description

Returns the first or last parts of a vector, matrix, data frame or function.

Usage

head(x, ...)
## Default S3 method:
head(x, n=6, ...)
## S3 method for class 'data.frame'
head(x, n=6, ...)

tail(x, ...)
## Default S3 method:
tail(x, n=6, ...)
## S3 method for class 'data.frame'
tail(x, n=6, ...)

Arguments

x

an object

n

size for the resulting object: number of elements for a vector (including lists), rows for a matrix or data frame or lines for a function.

...

arguments to be passed to or from other methods.

Details

For matrices and data frames, the first/last n rows are returned. For functions, the first/last n lines of the deparsed function are returned as character strings.

Value

An object (usually) like x but generally smaller.

Author(s)

Patrick Burns, improved and corrected by R-core

Examples

data(freeny)
head(freeny.x, n=10)
head(freeny.y)

tail(freeny.x)
tail(freeny.y)

tail(library)

[Package utils version 1.9.1 ]