TAIL(1)                              SysV                              TAIL(1)



NAME
     tail - deliver the last part of a file

SYNOPSIS
     tail [ +[number][lbc[f] ] ] [ 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).
     Number is counted in units of lines, blocks, or characters, according to
     the appended option l, b, or c.  When no units are specified, counting is
     by lines.

     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.

SEE ALSO
     dd(1M).

BUGS
     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.

WARNING
     The tail command will only tail the last 4096 bytes of a file regardless
     of its line count.