TAIL(1) User Commands TAIL(1)
NAME
tail – output the last part of files
SYNOPSIS
tail [OPTION]… [FILE]…
DESCRIPTION
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 options are mandatory for short options
too.
-c, –bytes=K
output the last K bytes; or use -c +K to output bytes starting
with the Kth of each file
-f, –follow[={name|descriptor}]
output appended data as the file grows;
an absent option argument means ‘descriptor’
-F same as –follow=name –retry
-n, –lines=K
output the last K lines, instead of the last 10; or use -n +K
to output starting with the Kth
–max-unchanged-stats=N
with –follow=name, 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); with inotify, this option is rarely useful
–pid=PID
with -f, terminate after process ID, PID dies
-q, –quiet, –silent
never output headers giving file names
–retry
keep trying to open a file if it is inaccessible
-s, –sleep-interval=N
with -f, sleep for approximately N seconds (default 1.0)
between iterations; with inotify and –pid=P, check process P
at least once every N seconds
-v, –verbose
always output headers giving file names
–help display this help and exit
–version
output version information and exit
If the first character of K (the number of bytes or lines) is a ‘+’,
print beginning with the Kth item from the start of each file,
otherwise, print the last K items in the file. K may have a
multiplier suffix: b 512, kB 1000, K 1024, MB 1000*1000, M 1024*1024,
GB 1000*1000*1000, G 1024*1024*1024, and so on for T, P, E, Z, Y.
With –follow (-f), tail defaults to following the file descriptor,
which means that even if a tail’ed file is renamed, tail will
continue to track its end. This default behavior is not desirable
when you really want to track the actual name of the file, not the
file descriptor (e.g., log rotation). Use –follow=name in that
case. That causes tail to track the named file in a way that
accommodates renaming, removal and creation.
GNU coreutils online help: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report tail translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>
AUTHOR
Written by Paul Rubin, David MacKenzie, Ian Lance Taylor, and Jim
Meyering.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU
GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
SEE ALSO
The full documentation for tail is maintained as a Texinfo manual.
If the info and tail programs are properly installed at your site,
the command
info coreutils ‘tail invocation’
should give you access to the complete manual.
COLOPHON
This page is part of the coreutils (basic file, shell and text
manipulation utilities) project. Information about the project can
be found at ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩. If you have a
bug report for this manual page, see
⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩. This page was obtained from
the tarball coreutils-8.23.tar.xz fetched from
⟨http://www.gnutls.org/download.html⟩ on 2014-12-30. If you discover
any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or
you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail
to [email protected]
GNU coreutils 8.23 December 2014 TAIL(1)