FreeBSD Manual Pages
tail(1) tail(1) NAME tail - deliver the last part of a file SYNOPSIS /usr/bin/tail [ +-s number [lbcr]] [file] /usr/bin/tail [-lbcr] [file] /usr/bin/tail [ +- number [lbcf]] [file] /usr/bin/tail [-lbcf] [file] /usr/xpg4/bin/tail [-f | -r] [-c number | -n number] [file] /usr/xpg4/bin/tail [ +- number [l | b | c] [f]] [file] /usr/xpg4/bin/tail [ +- number [l] [f | r] ] [file] The tail utility 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 a point in the file indicated by the -cnumber, -nnum- ber, or +-number options (if +number is specified, begins at distance number from the beginning; if -number is specified, from the end of the input; if number is NULL, the value 10 is assumed). number is counted in units of lines or byte according to the -c or -n options, or lines, blocks, or bytes, according to the appended option l, b, or c. When no units are specified, counting is by lines. The following options are supported for both /usr/bin/tail and /usr/xpg4/bin/tail. The -r and -f options are mutually exclusive. If both are specified on the command line, the -f option is ignored. -b Units of blocks. -c Units of bytes. -f Follow. If the input-file is not a pipe, the program does not terminate after the line of the input-file has been copied, but enters an endless loop, wherein it sleeps for a second and then attempts to read and copy further records from the input- file. Thus it can be used to monitor the growth of a file that is being written by some other process. -l Units of lines. -r Reverse. Copies lines from the specified starting point in the file in reverse order. The default for r is to print the entire file in reverse order. /usr/xpg4/bin/tail The following options are supported for /usr/xpg4/bin/tail only: -c number The number option-argument must be a decimal integer whose sign affects the location in the file, measured in bytes, to begin the copying: + Copying starts relative to the beginning of the file. - Copying starts relative to the end of the file. none Copying starts relative to the end of the file. The origin for counting is 1; that is, -c+1 represents the first byte of the file, -c-1 the last. -n number Equivalent to -cnumber, except the starting location in the file is measured in lines instead of bytes. The origin for counting is 1. That is, -n+1 represents the first line of the file, -n-1 the last. The following operand is supported: file A path name of an input file. If no file operands are speci- fied, the standard input is used. See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of tail when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2**31 bytes). Example 1: Using the tail Command The following command prints the last ten lines of the file fred, fol- lowed by any lines that are appended to fred between the time tail is initiated and killed. example% tail -f fred The next command prints the last 15 bytes of the file fred, followed by any lines that are appended to fred between the time tail is initiated and killed: example% tail -15cf fred See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of tail: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH. The following exit values are returned: 0 Successful completion. >0 An error occurred. See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: /usr/bin/tail +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWcsu | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |CSI |Enabled | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ /usr/xpg4/bin/tail +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWxcu4 | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |CSI |Enabled | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Interface Stability |Standard | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ cat(1), head(1), more(1), pg(1), dd(1M), attributes(5), environ(5), largefile(5), standards(5) Piped tails relative to the end of the file are stored in a buffer, and thus are limited in length. Various kinds of anomalous behavior can happen with character special files. 13 Jul 2005 tail(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS
Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=tail&sektion=1&manpath=SunOS+5.10>