


      TAIL(1)                     (UNIX 5.0)                    TAIL(1)



      NAME
           tail - deliver the last part of a file

      SYNTAX
           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(1).

      BUGS
           Tails relative to the end of the file are treasured up in a
           4096 byte buffer, and thus are limited in length.  Various
           kinds of anomalous behavior may happen with character
           special files.










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