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Im getting a strange usage message from the head command. Whats broken?

April 26, 2017Broken Command Head message Strange usage

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Im getting a strange usage message from the head command. Whats broken?

1 Answer

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10 Posted

If you’re seeing this:Unknown option: 1 Usage: head [-options] … followed by a list of option descriptions, you have a broken head executable. This happens when you install the Perl libwww library on an HFS+ system volume. It tries to create a new command /usr/bin/HEAD, which overwrites the existing head command because the file system is case-insensitive. head is a standard command used in many shell scripts and Makefiles. You need to get the original head executable back if you want to use Fink. The bootstrap script of the source release now checks for this, but you can still run into it if you use the binary release for first-time installation or install libwww after you installed Fink. This problem has also been reported due to the installation of /sw/bin/HEAD (not by any Fink package). This is easier to solve: rename /sw/bin/HEAD.