Unix Tip #4 (Tail)

4 Responses to Unix Tip #4 (Tail)

1. Logan Barnett says:

   April 13, 2009 at 5:31 am

   That log rotation is pretty neat! Thanks for the tip!
2. JGeiger says:

   April 13, 2009 at 7:06 am

   tail -100 filename will show the last 100 lines of filename.

   You don’t need the -n.
3. Derek Neighbors says:

   April 13, 2009 at 7:11 am

   does no specification default to numbers or bytes? for some reason i was thinking no specification defaulted to bytes.
4. Felix says:

   April 15, 2009 at 2:13 am

   Couple of remarks here:
   - tail defaults to showing the last 10 lines
   - tail -n 5, tail -n -5 and tail -5 all do the same: they show the last five lines of the file
   - tail -n +5 and tail +5 all do the same: they show all the lines from the fifth (included) till the end of the file
   - tail always shows the end of the file starting from a certain definable line/block/byte

   I think you got some stuff a little mixed up, especially regarding positive line numbers (you have to explicitely say +5 to start at the fifth line, as opposed to 5 or -5 starting at the fifth line before end), the fact that tails always ouputs the end of the file. To get the first lines of a file, go with the well-named head