Programatic removal of bytes from a file

Answer

To programatically remove bytes from either the start or end of a file, you can use the built in linux command, dd.

The command syntax description follows:
    dd if=<infile> -of=<outfile> -bs=<X> -skip=<Y> -count=<Z>

where <infile> represents the original file to be read
          <outfile> represents the name of the file to be produced by running the dd command
          <X> represents the byte size or count.
          <Y> represents the number of X to skip at the front of the file
          <Z> represents the number of <X> units to keep

For example,
  
dd -if /nz/kit/log/postgres/pg.log -of /nz/kit/log/postgres/pg.log.reduced -bs 100 -count 5

will read the /nz/kit/log/postgres/pg.log file and keep the first 500 bytes and redirect these bytes to the /nz/kit/log/postgres/pg.log.reduced file.

As a second example, 
dd -if /nz/kit/log/postgres/pg.log -of /nz/kit/log/postgres/pg.log.reduced -bs 100 -skip 5

will read the /nz/kit/log/postgres/pg.log file and will skip the first 500 bytes of the /nz/kit/log/postgres/pg.log file and redirect the remainder of the file to the /nz/kit/log/postgres/pg.log.reduced file.