Manual: gnutail

TAIL(1)							User Commands						     TAIL(1)

NAME
       tail - output the last part of files

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

DESCRIPTION
       Print  the last 10 lines of each FILE to standard output.  With more than one FILE, precede each with a header giving
       the file name.

       With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

       Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

       -c, --bytes=[+]NUM
	      output the last NUM bytes; or use -c +NUM to output starting with byte NUM of each file

       -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, terminate after process ID, PID dies; 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  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.

       With --follow (-f), tail defaults to following the file descriptor, which means that even if a tail'ed  file  is	 re‐
       named, 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.

AUTHOR
       Written by Paul Rubin, David MacKenzie, Ian Lance Taylor, and Jim Meyering.

REPORTING BUGS
       GNU coreutils online help: 
       Report any translation bugs to 

SEE ALSO
       head(1)

       Full documentation 
       or available locally via: info '(coreutils) tail invocation'

       Packaged by Ubuntu (9.7-3ubuntu2)
       Copyright © 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
       License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later .
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
       There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

GNU coreutils 9.7					January 2026						     TAIL(1)