head bug

I was using the command

cat $FILE | head -1 | wc -w

to get the number of words (columns) in a line of a file


This worked until the number of words got over a certain number (I haven't
checked to find out where, but it looks like about 10,000)


the command

cat $FILE | tail -1 | wc -w

worked fine for over 250,000 words in a line.



If there is such a limitation in head, could this be added to the man/info
for head??


Info tail includes the following comment:

"GNU `tail' can output any amount of data..."

There is nothing similar stated for head.



Thanks


   Brent Wood