in reply to line number ($.) problem ?
$ cat my.log 2005 2005 2005 2006 2006 2006 2007 2007 2007 2007 $ ls -l my.log -rw-r--r-- 1 bsdz mygroup 50 Mar 27 18:00 my.log $ grep -bm 1 2007 my.log 30:2007 $ tail -c $((50-30)) my.log 2007 2007 2007 2007 [download]