Shell: get lines x to y of file

Question

What unix shell command can I use to get lines x (e.g. 10) to y (e.g. to 15) from a file. grep doesn't seem to help and except doing a for loop I can't think of anything else.

Answer 1

You can use sed:

sed -n '5,10p' filename

to print lines from 5 to 10.

Answer 2

head y, tail y-x

head -n 15 filename | tail -n 5