TAIL(1)

📦
version 9.10 · 5 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 TAIL(1) 💖

okay so welcome to the TAIL(1) manual page, bestie — this is the one, this is the icon, and by the end you're gonna be tailing files like it's your whole personality 💅

✨ NAME ✨

tail — output the last part of files 🍓

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

tail [OPTION]... [FILE]...

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Okay so here's the vibe: tail prints the last 10 lines of each FILE straight to standard output. That's it. That's the whole gig. 👑

If you hand it more than one FILE, it precedes each one with a header telling you the file name — so you never get confused about which file's drama you're reading.

With no FILE at all, or when FILE is -, it reads from standard input. Yes, the classic - move. iconic.

ngl mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too — that's just how the family works, no negotiating.
  • -c, --bytes=[+]NUM — outputs the last NUM bytes; or if you do -c +NUM it outputs starting with byte NUM of each file ✨
  • --debug — tells you which --follow implementation is being used 👀
  • -f, --follow[={name|descriptor}] — outputs appended data as the file grows 🌱 if you don't give the option argument at all, it just means descriptor
  • -F — literally the same as --follow=name --retry, fr fr
  • -n, --lines=[+]NUM — outputs the last NUM lines instead of the last 10; or use -n +NUM to skip NUM-1 lines at the start 💫
  • --max-unchanged-stats=N — with --follow=name, it reopens a FILE that hasn't changed size after N (default 5) iterations, just to see if it got unlinked or renamed — which is, like, the usual case of rotated log files; with inotify this option is rarely useful 🫠
  • --pid=PID — with -f, it exits after PID no longer exists; you can repeat this to watch multiple processes, no cap 👯
  • -q, --quiet, --silent — never outputs headers giving file names, shhh 🤫
  • --retry — keeps trying to open a file if it's inaccessible. persistent queen 🎀
  • -s, --sleep-interval=N — with -f, sleeps for approximately N seconds (default 1.0) between iterations; with inotify and --pid=P, it checks process P at least once every N seconds 😴
  • -v, --verbose — always outputs headers giving file names. main character behavior, honestly 🎬
  • -z, --zero-terminated — line delimiter is NUL, not newline 🕳️
  • --help — displays this help and exits 💖
  • --version — outputs version information and exits ⭐

NUM may have a multiplier suffix, and yes you're gonna want these: b 512, kB 1000, K 1024, MB 1000*1000, M 1024*1024, GB 1000*1000*1000, G 1024*1024*1024, and so on for T, P, E, Z, Y, R, Q. Binary prefixes can be used too: KiB=K, MiB=M, and so on. 🌈

With --follow (-f), tail defaults to following the file descriptor, which means that even if a tail'ed file is renamed, tail will continue to track its end. Sounds great, right? BUT — this default behavior is not desirable when you actually want to track the real name of the file, not the file descriptor (e.g., log rotation, the eternal struggle). Use --follow=name in that case. That causes tail to track the named file in a way that accommodates renaming, removal and creation. slay 💅

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Written by Paul Rubin, David MacKenzie, Ian Lance Taylor, and Jim Meyering. the founding fathers of tails, we stan 🫶

💀 REPORTING BUGS 💀

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

Packaged by Ubuntu (9.10-1ubuntu2) Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

and that's the whole page, bestie — this was GNU coreutils 9.10, dated August 2026, and it's giving TAIL(1) in the most immaculate way possible. mwah 💋💖

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