Manual page for TAIL(1)
tail - display the last part of a file
SYNOPSIS
tail
+|-number
[
lbc
] [
f
] [
filename
]
tail
+|-number
[
l
] [
rf
] [
filename
]
DESCRIPTION
tail
copies
filename
to the standard output beginning at a
designated place. If no file is named, the standard input is used.
OPTIONS
Options are all jammed together, not specified separately with their
own
`-'
signs.
- +number
-
Begin copying at distance
number
from the beginning of the file.
number
is counted in units of lines, blocks or
characters,
according to the appended option
l,
b, or
c.
When no units are specified, counting is by lines.
If
number
is not specified, the value 10 is used.
- -number
-
Begin copying at distance
number
from the end of the file.
number
is counted in units of lines, blocks or
characters,
according to the appended option
l,
b, or
c.
When no units are specified, counting is by lines.
If
number
is not specified, the value 10 is used.
- l
-
number
is counted in units of lines.
- b
-
number
is counted in units of blocks.
- c
-
number
is counted in units of characters.
- r
-
Copy lines from the end of the file in
reverse order. The default for option
r
is to print the entire file in reverse order.
number
is the count of lines from the end of the file regardless of sign.
Option
r
may not be used with
b
or
c.
- f
-
If the input file is not a pipe,
do not terminate after the line of the input
file has been copied, but enter an endless loop,
sleeping for a second and then attempting to read and copy
further records from the input file.
This option may be used to monitor the growth of a file that is
being written by some other process.
For example, the command:
-
tail -f fred
will print the last ten lines of the file
fred,
followed by any lines that are appended to
fred
between the time
tail
is initiated and killed.
As another example, the command:
-
tail -15cf fred
will print the last 15 characters of the file
fred,
followed by any lines that are appended to
fred
between the time
tail
is initiated and killed.
SEE ALSO
dd.1
BUGS
Data for a tail relative to the end of the file is stored in a buffer,
and thus is limited in size.
Various kinds of anomalous behavior may happen with character special
files.
Created by unroff & hp-tools.
© somebody (See intro for details). All Rights Reserved.
Last modified 11/5/97
