Sponsored Content
Full Discussion: Help with tail command
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Help with tail command Post 302392770 by methyl on Friday 5th of February 2010 11:39:56 AM
Old 02-05-2010
Interestingly franklin52 version should generate the same error because $Count is empty at the time of the "tail" command thereby causing "tail - ". Update: franklin52 version now has $count and therefore does not have the problem in that form.

What is weird is why $Count is empty (or has a leading space character) in the original script also causing "tail - ".
Hmm. In many old scripts I have a sed to remove a spurious space character from the output of "wc -l".

Last edited by methyl; 02-05-2010 at 12:47 PM..
 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

help with !(tail -2) command.. using pipes

I am trying to using pipe (|) with ! (not) operator to list all the other files except the latest two and I am using the following command. $ ls -ltr *.lst|!(tail -2) ksh: 20050211180252.lst: cannot execute but it is trying to execute the file returned by tail -2. I am able to do that in 4... (8 Replies)
Discussion started by: sdlayeeq
8 Replies

2. Shell Programming and Scripting

tail command

Hi , I have found a interesting thing about tail command: when I tried to use 'tail -1 *' to look at every file with the current derectory, I only got one line of result of one file. But if I use 'head -1 *', I would get multiple lines. Is there a way to do get multiple lines with 'tail -1 *'... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: whatisthis
3 Replies

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

tail command..

I was wondering how can I do this I have file myfile.txt wc -l is: 5 000 000 I have to remove first 1 000 000 lines from header.. I tryed with tail -4000000 myfile.txt>newfile.txt but it does not work... any help?? (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: amon
2 Replies

4. Solaris

Tail command in one line

HI i have to copy the last 5000 lines form a log file and copy the same in the same file .overwriting the same log file. ex: tail -5000 testfile1 > testfile2 cat testfile2 mv tesftfile2 testfile1 will produce the correct result.but i want to have this done in one line???? (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: saurabh84g
4 Replies

5. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Tail command with wildcard file name

Please help with the following command tail -f /appdata/logs/alert_audit517.txt | grep "Sep 02" The problem I have is with the file name "alert_audit517.txt". The 3 digit number at the end of the file name changes, so I need the file name to use a wildcard. Ive tried alert_audit***.txt, but... (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: robertson1995
5 Replies

6. Shell Programming and Scripting

tail command problems

Hi, In my home directory, there are so many files. i tried to get the lastly created file by following command. file=`ls -lrt MXOfiles* | tail -1` As there are so many files, it displays "$ : 0403-027 The parameter list is too long." Can someone tell me how can i get the recent file... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: JSKOBS
1 Replies

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

tail command help

Hi does anyone know how to create a file using the tail command? My book has this file I need to create and it says to use the tail command and that it is possible but I have no idea. Thanks. (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: drew211
4 Replies

8. Homework & Coursework Questions

Using tail with the filter command

Use and complete the template provided. The entire template must be completed. If you don't, your post may be deleted! 1. The problem statement, all variables and given/known data: Devise a chain of filters using some or all of the following programs pr, cut, cat, tail to display a numbered... (8 Replies)
Discussion started by: hbell221
8 Replies

9. How to Post in the The UNIX and Linux Forums

Usage of tail command in .awk

Hi, I want to do file format using awk script, for that i wan to use 'tail'. Here is the scenario. I will be having set of files in a directory. Those files i need to write to another directory with same file name, but while writing the file to out directory, i need to write the last line as... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: Venkata Madhu
3 Replies

10. UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers

Tail -f Command help

Hi Team, Can anyone help me here: I have to access server logs via putty and these logs file is a trailing file (continously updating) with ERROR and WARNINGS... I need to know if I can pull this trailing file to a local drive so that I can do some higlighting on some keywords through Notepad... (13 Replies)
Discussion started by: jitensetia
13 Replies
TAIL(1) 						    BSD General Commands Manual 						   TAIL(1)

NAME
tail -- display the last part of a file SYNOPSIS
tail [-F | -f | -r] [-b number | -c number | -n number] [file ...] DESCRIPTION
The tail utility displays the contents of file or, by default, its standard input, to the standard output. The display begins at a byte, line or 512-byte block location in the input. Numbers having a leading plus (``+'') sign are relative to the beginning of the input, for example, ``-c +2'' starts the display at the second byte of the input. Numbers having a leading minus (``-'') sign or no explicit sign are relative to the end of the input, for example, ``-n 2'' displays the last two lines of the input. The default starting location is ``-n 10'', or the last 10 lines of the input. The options are as follows: -b number The location is number 512-byte blocks. -c number The location is number bytes. -f The -f option causes tail to not stop when end of file is reached, but rather to wait for additional data to be appended to the input. The -f option is ignored if the standard input is a pipe, but not if it is a FIFO. -F The -F option implies the -f option, but tail will also check to see if the file being followed has been renamed or rotated. The file is closed and reopened when tail detects that the filename being read from has a new inode number. The -F option is ignored if reading from standard input rather than a file. -n number The location is number lines. -r The -r option causes the input to be displayed in reverse order, by line. Additionally, this option changes the meaning of the -b, -c and -n options. When the -r option is specified, these options specify the number of bytes, lines or 512-byte blocks to display, instead of the bytes, lines or blocks from the beginning or end of the input from which to begin the display. The default for the -r option is to display all of the input. If more than a single file is specified, each file is preceded by a header consisting of the string ``==> XXX <=='' where ``XXX'' is the name of the file. DIAGNOSTICS
The tail utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. SEE ALSO
cat(1), head(1), sed(1) STANDARDS
The tail utility is expected to be a superset of the IEEE Std 1003.2-1992 (``POSIX.2'') specification. In particular, the -F, -b and -r options are extensions to that standard. The historic command line syntax of tail is supported by this implementation. The only difference between this implementation and historic versions of tail, once the command line syntax translation has been done, is that the -b, -c and -n options modify the -r option, i.e. ``-r -c 4'' displays the last 4 characters of the last line of the input, while the historic tail (using the historic syntax ``-4cr'') would ignore the -c option and display the last 4 lines of the input. HISTORY
A tail command appeared in PWB UNIX. BSD
June 6, 1993 BSD
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 01:07 AM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy