tail(1)                                                   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'') flag 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.  You must interrupt tail to
          escape this loop.

     EXAMPLE
               tail -f jack

          will print the last ten lines of the file jack, followed by
          any lines that are appended to jack between the time tail is
          initiated and interrupted.

               tail -15cf jack

          will print the last 15 characters of the file jack, followed
          by any lines that are appended to jack between the time tail
          is initiated and interrupted.

     FILES
          /bin/tail

     SEE ALSO
          cat(1), dd(1), head(1), more(1), pg(1).

     BUGS
          tails relative to the end of the file are treasured up in a
          buffer, and thus are limited in length.  Various kinds of
          anomalous behavior may happen with character special files.






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