tail(1)                                                                tail(1)


NAME
     tail - deliver the last part of a file

SYNOPSIS
     tail [ -f ] [ -c number | -n number ] [ file ]
     tail [ + number lbcr ] [ file ]
     tail [ -lbcr ] [ file ]
     tail [ + number lbcf ] [ file ]
     tail [ -lbcf ] [ file ]

DESCRIPTION
     tail copies the named file to the standard output beginning at a
     designated place.  If no file is named, the standard input is used.

     Copying begins at distance +number from the beginning, or -number from
     the end of the input (if number is null, the value 10 is assumed).  If
     the -c or -n options are used, number is assumed to be negative unless a
     + sign is prepended.  Number is counted in units of lines, blocks, or
     characters, according to the appended/prepended option l/-n, b, or c/-c.
     When no units are specified, counting is by lines.  tail processes
     supplementary code set characters according to the locale specified in
     the LC_CTYPE environment variable [see LANG on environ(5)], except that
     multibyte characters may not be displayed correctly when the -b and -c
     options are specified.

     With the -f (follow) option, if the input file is not a pipe, the program
     will not terminate after the line of the input file has been copied, but
     will enter an endless loop, wherein it sleeps for a second and then
     attempts to read and copy further records from the input file.  Thus it
     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.

     The r option copies lines from the specified starting point relative to
     the end of the file (regardless of the sign) in reverse order.  The
     default for r is to print the entire file in reverse order.

     The r and f options are mutually exclusive.


FILES
     /usr/lib/locale/locale/LC_MESSAGES/uxcore.abi
          language-specific message file [See LANG on environ (5).]

SEE ALSO
     cat(1), head(1), more(1), pg(1), tail(1), dd(1M)

NOTES
     Tails relative to the end of the file are stored in a buffer, and thus
     are limited in length.  Various kinds of anomalous behavior may happen
     with character special files.  The tail command will only tail the last
     256 Kbytes of a file regardless of its line count.


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