005-the-tail-command.md

The tail command

The tail command prints the last 10 lines of a file by default.

Example:

tail filename.txt

Syntax:

tail [OPTION] [FILENAME]

Get a specific number of lines with tail:

Use the -n option with a number(should be an integer) of lines to display.

Example:

tail -n 10 foo.txt

Syntax:

tail -n <~number> foo.txt

This command will display the last 10 lines of file foo.txt.

You can also omit the n flag, this example will also give same result as above command:

tail -10 foo.txt

Refresh the output on any new entry in a file

It's possible to let tail output any new line added to the file you are looking into. So if a new log entry is written to the file, it will immediately be shown in your output. This can be done via --follow or -f as an option.

Example:

tail -f foo.txt