12.9. Finer Control on tail

What if you need to look at the last 11 lines of the file? The command tail -n shows the final n lines. The command tail +n discards the first n-1 lines, giving you line n and everything that follows it.

You can also tell tail to count the number of characters or the number of 512-byte blocks. To do so, use the -c option (count characters) or the -b option (count blocks). If you want to state explicitly that you're interested in lines, give the -l option.

Your tail probably has a -r option that shows the file in reverse order, starting from the last line.

Many versions of Unix limit the maximum number of lines that tail, especially tail -r, can display.

-- ML

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12.8. How to Look at the End of a File: tail		12.10. How to Look at Files as They Grow

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