TAIL(1)                    Commands and Applications                   TAIL(1)

NAME

       tail - display the last part of a file

SYNOPSIS

       tail [-f] [-b number | -c number | -n number] [file...]

   Obsolescent:
       tail [-f] [+|-number[l | b | c]] [file...]

DESCRIPTION

       The  tail  utility  displays  the  contents of file or, by default, its
       standard input, to the standard output.

       The display begins at a byte, line or 512-byte block  location  in  the
       input.   Numbers having a leading plus (``+'') sign are relative to the
       beginning of the input, for example, -c +2 starts the  display  at  the
       second  byte of the input.  Numbers having a leading minus (``-'') sign
       or no explicit sign are relative to the end of the input, for  example,
       -n  2  displays  the last two lines of the input.  The default starting
       location is -n 10, or the last 10 lines of the input.

OPTIONS

       The options are as follows:

              -b     The location is number 512-byte blocks.

              -c     The location is number bytes.

              -f     The -f option causes tail not to stop when end of file is
                     reached, but rather to wait for additional data to be ap‐
                     pended to the input.  The -f option  is  ignored  if  the
                     standard input is a pipe, but not if it is a FIFO.

              -n     The location is number lines.

       If  more  than  a  single file is specified, each file is preceded by a
       header consisting of the string ==> XXX <== where XXX is  the  name  of
       the file.

       The tail utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

VERSION

       This manual page documents tail version 2.0.

ATTRIBUTIONS

       This  command was ported from FreeBSD source code for distribution with
       GNO/ME 2.0.6.

SEE ALSO

       cat(1), head(1), sed(1)

STANDARDS

       The tail utility is expected to be a superset of the POSIX.2 specifica‐
       tion.  In particular, the -b option is an extension to that standard.

       The  historic (obsolescent) command line syntax of tail is supported by
       this implementation.

HISTORY

       The BSD -r option, which causes the input to be  displayed  in  reverse
       order, by line, has not been implemented for the GNO version of tail.

       Version  1.1  (18-Jan-93) of tail, shipped with GNO 2.0, was written by
       Sameer Parekh (zane@ddsw1.MCS.COM).



GNO                               August 1997                          TAIL(1)