The tail command in Linux and Unix-like systems is used to display the last few lines of a file. By default, it will display the last 10 lines of a file, but this can be modified with options.
Here is the basic syntax for the tail command:
tail [options] [file]
file is the name of the file you want to display the last few lines of.
Here are some examples of the tail command:
1. To display the last 10 lines of a file called “file1.txt”:
$ tail file1.txt
2. To display the last 14 lines of a file called “file1.txt”
$ tail -n 14 file1.txt
Note: The -n option is used to specify the number of lines to display.
3. To display the last 15 lines of a file called “file1.txt” and “file2.txt”
$ tail -n 15 file1.txt file2.txt
4. To display the last 20 lines of the output of a command
$ ls -la | tail -n 20
Note: The | symbol is used to pipe the output of one command to another. In this case it is piping the output of the ls -la command to the tail -n 20 command.
5. To display the last n lines of multiple files, in this case 25 lines
$ tail -n 25 file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt
6. The tail command is useful for quickly displaying the last few lines of a file, which can be useful for previewing the contents of a file, monitoring the end of a log file, or for troubleshooting purposes. The tail command can also be used to monitor log files in real-time by using the -f option, which will display new lines as they are written to the file.
$ tail -f file1.txt
Note: The -f option is used to display new lines as they are written to the file.
7. To display the last n bytes of a file, where n equals to 30
$ tail -c 30 file1.txt
Note: The -c option is used to specify the number of bytes to display.
It's important to note that the tail command will display the last few lines of the file, regardless of the file type, whether it's text or binary.
The tail command can be combined with other commands like grep, sed or awk to manipulate the output or filter it. It's also useful to use tail in combination with head command to display the first and last few lines of a file.
Please note that the tail command will display the last few lines of the file, regardless of the file type, whether it's text or binary.
Please also review the head command, which is quite similar but still different from tail. The tail command is useful for displaying the last few lines of a file, which can be useful for monitoring log files in real-time, troubleshooting and previewing the contents of a file. The head command is useful for displaying the first few lines of a file, which can be useful for previewing the contents of a file or for troubleshooting purposes. Both of them are useful when you have a large file and you only want to see a specific part of the file without opening it in an editor.