tail

Name

tail -- output the last part of files

Description

tail is as specified in the SUS but with differences as listed below.

LSB Deprecated Differences

The behaviors specified in this section are expected to disappear from a future version of the LSB; applications should only use the non-LSB-deprecated behaviors.

--retry

tries to open a file even if it is inaccessible when tail starts or if it becomes inaccessible later; useful only with -f.

--bytes=N

outputs the last N bytes.

--follow

is equivalent to -f.

--lines=N

is equivalent to -n.

--max-unchanged-stats=N

performs open/fstat of a file specified by name (if there have been N consecutive iterations for which the size has remained the same) to determine if that file name is still associated with the same device/inode-number pair as before.

--max-consecutive-size-changes=N

if a file has been specified by name, controls how long tail follows the descriptor of a file that continues growing at a rapid pace even after it is deleted or renamed. After detecting N consecutive size changes for a file, open/fstat the file to determine if that file name is still associated with the same device/inode-number pair as before.

--pid=PID

terminates after process ID PID dies (only may be specified if -f is).

-q, --quiet, --silent

does not outputs headers giving file names.

-s, --sleep-interval=S

sleeps S seconds between iterations (only may be specified if -f is).

-v, --verbose

outputs headers giving file names.

+NUMBER, -NUMBER

supports b, k and m as suffixes (referring to multipliers 512, 1024 and 1048576, respectively), as opposed to the c or l suffixes as stated in the SUS.