The number of the last line read from the last filehandle read is stored in $., so you can do something like this to show the first 10 lines of a file:
perl -e "while(<>){print qq'$.: $_'; last if $.==10}" yourfile.txt

Update: ++ danger for a wealth of alternatives, as well as the more practical one-liner!

--
I'd like to be able to assign to an luser

In reply to Re: I feel stupid. by Albannach
in thread Read n lines from the top of a text file by Anonymous Monk

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