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 is the same as the -f option, except that every five seconds tail will check to see if the file named on the command
	     line has been shortened or moved (it is considered moved if the inode or device number changes) and, if so, it will close the current
	     file, open the filename given, print out the entire contents, and continue to wait for more data to be appended.  This option is used
	     to follow log files though rotation by newsyslog(8) or similar programs.

     -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.

     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 -b, -r and -F
     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 Version 7 AT&T UNIX.

BUGS

     When using the -F option, tail will not detect a file truncation if, between the truncation and the next check of the file size, data written
     to the file make it larger than the last known file size.

BSD
								   June 6, 1993 							       BSD