Or:

    head -n5 data/a.csv | tv

Unless your csv has embedded line breaks

If tv works with embedded EOLs, you can do this:

  cat data/a.csv | tv | head -n5

It is more resource intensive, but it pushes the problem you mentioned onto tv. If tv doesn't work with embedded EOLs, then you need to fix your data or fix your tool.

Can you give an example of what you mean? If it breaks tv then I would like to add it to the automated tests and see if we can work on it.

No sorry, I assume tv is fine. The problem is in assuming `head -n5` gives you 5 rows and piping that into tv.

Oo I see. Thanks for clarifying.

> Just show me the top 5 rows. That's all most people are looking for.

Is it? I'd wager that can't be more than half its use at most. Accessing a specific section that could be at any section of the file is very common in my experience, as is truly random access. Both of these, as well as the first few rows use case, are far better served by a page system.