Immediately ^'d this post for it's usefulness, but I put this in my .bashrc instead:
function body_alias() {
sed -n $1,$2p $3
}
alias body=body_alias
I used to have little scripts like body in my own ~/bin or /usr/local/bin but I've been slowly moving those to my .bashrc which I can copy to new systems I log on to.
Glad you liked it. Your alias technique is good too. Plus it may save a small amount of time since the body script does not have to be loaded from its file (as in my case) - unless your *nix version caches it in memory after the first time.
$ cat body_test.txt
$ cat `which body`sed -n $1,$2p $3
$ body 5 10 body_test.txt