Can I grep only the first n lines of a file?

Question

I have very long log files, is it possible to ask grep to only search the first 10 lines?

Answer 1

Or use awk for a single process without |:

awk '/your_regexp/ && NR < 11' INPUTFILE

On each line, if your_regexp matches, and the number of records (lines) is less than 11, it executes the default action (which is printing the input line).

Or use sed:

sed -n '/your_regexp/p;10q' INPUTFILE 

Checks your regexp and prints the line (-n means don't print the input, which is otherwise the default), and quits right after the 10th line.