tail

tail [FLAG]... [FILE]...

Print the last 10 lines of each FILE to standard output. With more than one FILE, precede each with a header giving the file name. With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input. Mandatory arguments to long flags are mandatory for short flags too.

Options

--bytes, -c

Number of bytes to print

--follow, -f

Print the file as it grows

--lines, -n

Number of lines to print

--pid=<PID>

With -f, terminate after process ID, PID dies

--quiet, --silent, -q

Never output headers giving file names

--sleep-interval=<N>, -s <N>

Number of seconds to sleep between polling the file when running with -f

--max-unchanged-stats=<N>

Reopen a FILE which has not changed size after N (default 5) iterations to see if it has been unlinked or renamed (this is the usual case of rotated log files); This option is meaningful only when polling (i.e., with –use-polling) and when –follow=name

--verbose, -v

Always output headers giving file names

--zero-terminated, -z

Line delimiter is NUL, not newline

--use-polling

Disable ‘inotify’ support and use polling instead

--retry

Keep trying to open a file if it is inaccessible

-F

Same as –follow=name –retry

--debug

indicate which –follow implementation is used

--presume-input-pipe

Examples

Show last 10 lines in a file:

tail {{path/to/file}}

Show last 10 lines of multiple files:

tail {{path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...}}

Show last 5 lines in file:

tail {{[-5|--lines 5]}} {{path/to/file}}

Print a file from a specific line number:

tail {{[-n|--lines]}} +{{count}} {{path/to/file}}

Print a specific count of bytes from the end of a given file:

tail {{[-c|--bytes]}} {{count}} {{path/to/file}}

Print the last lines of a given file and keep reading it until <Ctrl c>:

tail {{[-f|--follow]}} {{path/to/file}}

Keep reading file until <Ctrl c>, even if the file is inaccessible:

tail {{[-F|--retry --follow]}} {{path/to/file}}

Show last count lines in a file and refresh every seconds seconds:

tail {{[-n|--lines]}} {{count}} {{[-s|--sleep-interval]}} {{seconds}} {{[-f|--follow]}} {{path/to/file}}

The examples are provided by the tldr-pages project under the CC BY 4.0 License.

Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail.