The skip keyword tells the program to skip lines at the start of a text (i.e. not binary) data file. The lines that are skipped do not count toward the line count used in processing the every keyword. Note that ‘skip N‘ skips lines only at the start of the file, whereas ‘every ::N‘ skips lines at the start of every data block in the file. See also skip for a similar option that applies to binary data files.