tail(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | AUTHOR | REPORTING BUGS | COPYRIGHT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

TAIL(1)                       User Commands                      TAIL(1)

NAME         top

       tail - output the last part of files

SYNOPSIS         top

       tail [OPTION]... [FILE]...

DESCRIPTION         top

       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=[+]NUM
              output the last NUM bytes; or use -c +NUM to output
              starting with byte NUM 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=[+]NUM
              output the last NUM lines, instead of the last 10; or use
              -n +NUM to skip NUM-1 lines at the start

       --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; can be
              repeated to watch multiple processes

       -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

       -z, --zero-terminated
              line delimiter is NUL, not newline

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
              output version information and exit

       NUM 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, R, Q.  Binary prefixes can be used, too:
       KiB=K, MiB=M, and so on.

       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.

AUTHOR         top

       Written by Paul Rubin, David MacKenzie, Ian Lance Taylor, and Jim
       Meyering.

REPORTING BUGS         top

       GNU coreutils online help:
       <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
       Report any translation bugs to
       <https://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT         top

       Copyright © 2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc.  License GPLv3+:
       GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://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         top

       head(1)

       Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/tail>
       or available locally via: info '(coreutils) tail invocation'

COLOPHON         top

       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-9.5.tar.xz fetched from
       ⟨http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/⟩ on 2024-06-14.  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 man-pages@man7.org

GNU coreutils 9.5              March 2024                        TAIL(1)

Pages that refer to this page: head(1)pmcd(1)pmdalogger(1)pmdasystemd(1)pmdaweblog(1)pon(1)