Just a minor modification to an earlier solution would allow you to print the first five lines of multiple files: 
perl -pe 'close ARGV if $. == 5' file1 file2 ...

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Update: The code above fails if one if the files is less than 5 lines long! This works better: 

perl -pe 'close ARGV if $. == 5 or eof' file1 file2 ...

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buckaduck

In reply to Re: how to print first 5 lines of a file by buckaduck
in thread how to print first 5 lines of a file by Anonymous Monk

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