Unix: Visual QuickStart Guide

Viewing file endings with tail

Occasionally, you might also need to use tail, which displays the last lines of a file. tail is particularly handy for checking footers or for updating information in a footer (see Code Listing 6.5). Just as with head (described in the previous pages), tail offers several options for viewing files.

To view file endings with tail:

• tail honeydo

  At the shell prompt, type tail followed by the file name. As Code Listing 6.5 shows, you'll see the last ten lines on the screen.

To view a specified number of lines:

• tail -15 honeydo

  Here, all you do is add a specific number of lines you want to view (-15).

To view the endings of multiple files:

• tail honey* | more

  Pipe the tail command and the files (multiple files indicated ...