TAIL(1)

📦
version 9.12 · 27 versions
, in arch rolling

💖 TAIL(1) — the last-lines queen 💖

okay bestie, welcome to tail(1), the User Commands era of the manual pages, and honestly? she's iconic. she shows you the end of things. the finale. the last word. main character energy but make it a file 💅

✨ NAME ✨

tail — output the last part of files 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

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

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so basically: print the last 10 lines of each FILE to standard output. if you hand her more than one FILE, she's gonna precede each one with a header giving the file name, because she's polite like that ✨

with no FILE, or when FILE is -, she reads standard input. classic. no cap 🫶

also, mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too. yes bestie, the rules apply to everyone 😌

💅 the options, one by one, no skipping, we don't do that here 💅

  • -c, --bytes=[+]NUM — output the last NUM bytes; or use -c +NUM to output starting with byte NUM of each file 🍓
  • --debug — indicate which --follow implementation is used 🔍
  • -f, --follow[={name|descriptor}] — output appended data as the file grows; an absent option argument means 'descriptor' 🌱
  • -F — same as --follow=name --retry 💖
  • -n, --lines=[+]NUM — output 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, reopen a FILE which has not changed size after N (default 5) iterations to see if it has been unlinked or renamed (this is the usual case of rotated log files); with inotify, this option is rarely useful 👀
  • --pid=PID — with -f, exit after PID no longer exists; can be repeated to watch multiple processes 🧚
  • -q, --quiet, --silent — never output headers giving file names 🤫
  • --retry — keep trying to open a file if it is inaccessible 🔁
  • -s, --sleep-interval=N — with -f, sleep for approximately N seconds (default 1.0) between iterations; with inotify and --pid=P, check process P at least once every N seconds 😴
  • -v, --verbose — always output headers giving file names 📣
  • -z, --zero-terminated — line delimiter is NUL, not newline ⭐
  • --help — display this help and exit 🫶
  • --version — output version information and exit 👑

🔢 NUM got multipliers, bestie 🔢

NUM may have a multiplier suffix: 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. the way she just keeps going 😭

🌈 the --follow lore (read this one fr fr) 🌈

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. this default behavior is not desirable when you really want to track the actual name of the file, not the file descriptor (e.g., log rotation). use --follow=name in that case. that causes tail to track the named file in a way that accommodates renaming, removal and creation. periodt. 💅

lowkey important: if you're tailing a rotated log and it's acting cursed, this paragraph is your bestie. --follow=name is the vibe check you needed.

💜 AUTHOR 💜

Written by Paul Rubin, David MacKenzie, Ian Lance Taylor, and Jim Meyering. kings, honestly 👑

🙈 REPORTING BUGS 🙈

Report bugs to: <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>. Report any translation bugs to: <https://translationproject.org/team/>. GNU coreutils home page: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/> General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>

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.

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/tail> or available locally via: info '(coreutils) tail invocation'

and that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 this one's from GNU coreutils 9.12, dated September 2026 — so like, go forth and read the last 10 lines of everything. slay 💖✨🦋

📦 where this page comes from