Commands using tail sorted by votes

Commands using tail (292)

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Watch end of files real time, especially log files

Changes are displayed when they are written to the file to exit Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ tail -f /home/ubuntu/.bash_history 
uptime 
echo hello
exit
```
-1

tail -f ~/.bash_history

totti · 2011-09-15 19:35:09 3
speak a chat log file while it's running

like #9295, but awkish instead of perlish
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

tail -f LOGFILE | awk '{system("say \"" $0 "\"");}'

tamouse · 2011-09-16 06:20:06 9
random git-commit message

Put in your path (.bashrc or similar). Then instead of running '$ git-commit -m ' use '$ git-random'
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

git-random(){ gitRan=$(curl -L -s http://whatthecommit.com/ |grep -A 1 "\"c" |tail -1 |sed 's/<p>//'); git commit -m "$gitRan"; }

unixmonkey32483 · 2012-03-07 22:25:14 1004
a tail function for automatic smart output

tail() { thbin="/usr/bin/tail"; if [ "${1:0:1}" != "-" ]; then fc=$(($#==0?1:$#)); lpf="$((($LINES - 3 - 2 * $fc) / $fc))"; lpf="$(($lpf<1?2:$lpf))"; [ $fc -eq 1 ] && $thbin -n $lpf "$@" | /usr/bin/fold -w $COLUMNS | $thbin -n $lpf || $thbin -n $lpf "$@"; else $thbin "$@"; fi; unset lpf fc thbin; } This is a function that implements an improved version of tail. It tries to limit the number of lines so that the screen is filled completely. It works with pipes, single and multiple files. If you add different options to tail, they will overwrite the settings from the function. It doesn't work very well when too many files (with wrapped lines) are specified. Its optimised for my three-line prompt. It also works for head. Just s/tail/head/g Don't set 'thbin="tail"', this might lead to a forkbomb.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

tail() { thbin="/usr/bin/tail"; if [ "${1:0:1}" != "-" ]; then fc=$(($#==0?1:$#)); lpf="$((($LINES - 3 - 2 * $fc) / $fc))"; lpf="$(($lpf<1?2:$lpf))"; [ $fc -eq 1 ] && $thbin -n $lpf "$@" | /usr/bin/fold -w $COLUMNS | $thbin -n $lpf || $thbin -n $lpf...

fpunktk · 2012-03-23 19:00:30 3
Get current stable kernel version string from kernel.org
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

curl -s kernel.org | grep '<strong>' | head -3 | tail -1 | cut -d'>' -f3 | cut -d'<' -f1

mdix · 2012-06-15 21:28:42 22
Realtime lines per second in a log file

logtop show number of lines per second, also classify them so you can show a "top" of every aspect of your logfile : tail -f access.log | awk '{print $1; fflush();}' | logtop
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

tail -f logfile | logtop

Sizeof · 2012-06-24 19:18:30 3
Compile CoffeeScript on Mac clipboard to JavaScript and print it

This particular combination of flags mimics Try CoffeeScript (on http://coffeescript.org/#try:) as closely as possible. And the `tail` call removes the comment `// Generated by CoffeeScript 1.6.3`. See `coffee -h` for explanation of `coffee`'s flags. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
foo("abc", function() {
  return "blah";
});


(given this text on the clipboard:)
foo "abc", ->
  "blah"
```
-1

pbpaste | coffee -bcsp | tail -n +2

roryokane · 2013-09-13 04:50:27 13
find all minimum values in file with at least 100 lines
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

for ff in directory; do numLines=`wc -l $ff`; numLines=$(echo $numLines | sed 's/ .*//g'); min=$(sort -nrk 1 $ff | tail -1); if [ $numLines -gt 100 ]; then echo $min >> minValues; fi;done;

user1234 · 2013-09-23 04:04:52 7
get line#1000 from text.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

head -1000 < lines.txt | tail -1

wbx · 2009-02-08 06:41:20 15
View new log messages in real time

Use this command to see logs update in real time
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

tail -f /var/log/messages

nicdev · 2009-02-12 19:30:33 10
print random commandlinefu.com submission

ok I'm sure it's not pretty Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Terminal - runs a bash script in debugging mode    
bash -x ./post_to_commandlinefu.sh
```
-2

lynx -source http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/random | sed 's/<[^>]*>//g' | head -1037 | tail -10 | sed -e 's/^[ \t]*//' | sed '/^$/d' | head -2

lxtips · 2009-06-02 09:48:59 11
How far is Mac OS X 10.6 from 64-bit?

Not as far off as you thought, now is it? -mac fanboy Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
127	Mach-O 64-bit kext bundle x86_64
140	Mach-O object i386
```
-2

file /System/Library/Extensions/*.kext/Contents/MacOS/* |grep -i x86_64 |nl | tail -1 | cut -f1 -f3; file /System/Library/Extensions/*.kext/Contents/MacOS/* |grep -i "mach-o object i386" |nl | tail -1 | cut -f1 -f3

digitalshadow · 2009-09-11 16:43:27 4
tail, with specific pattern colored

but you can't see the colors in that sample output :( Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
seq 1111 1122|egrep --color=always $\|12
1111
1112
1113
1114
1115
1116
1117
1118
1119
1120
1121
1122
```
-2

tail -f file | egrep --color=always $\|PATTERN

sitaram · 2009-10-15 13:08:30 14
Monitor the Kernel Ring Buffer

Useful with new unknown devices or just monitoring, probably useful for the sysadmin. Updates every 2 seconds. More here: http://linuxclisecurity.blogspot.com/2009/12/monitor-kernel-ring-buffer.html.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

watch 'dmesg | tail -15'

Heoa · 2009-12-20 02:00:05 3
Generate background office noise using Digg feeds and OSX.

Instead of having someone else read you the Digg headlines, Have OSX do it. Requires Curl+Sed+Say. This could probably be easily modified to use espeak for Linux.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

IFS=`echo -en "\n\b"`; for i in $(curl http://feeds.digg.com/digg/container/technology/popular.rss | grep '<title>' | sed -e 's#<[^>]*>##g' | tail -n10); do echo $i; echo $i | sed 's/^/Did you hear about /g' | say; sleep 30; done

echosedawk · 2010-06-07 22:16:19 4
Grep with one result at a time

Not perfect but working (at least on the project i wrote it ;) ) Specify what you want search in var search, then it grep the folder and show one result at a time. Press enter and then it will show the next result. It can work bad on result in the firsts lines, and it can be improved to allow to come back. But in my case (a large project, i was checking if a value wasn't used withouth is corresponding const and the value is "1000" so there was a lot of result ...) it was perfect ;)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

search="whatyouwant";data=$(grep "$search" * -R --exclude-dir=.svn -B2 -A2);for((i=$(echo "$data" | wc -l);$i>0;i=$(($i-6)) )); do clear;echo "$data"| tail -n $i | head -n 5; read;done

Juluan · 2011-08-29 18:14:16 4
Show the single most recently modified file in a directory

List all files in a directory in reverse order by modified timestamp. When piped through tail the user will see the most recent file name.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

ls -lFart |tail -n1

jambino · 2011-10-17 19:49:14 7
tail a log over ssh
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

ssh remotebox tail -f /var/log/remotelog

netaxiz · 2011-12-13 17:35:54 3
Get the date for the last Saturday of a given month

This is a little trickier than finding the last Sunday, because you know the last Sunday is in the first position of the last line. The trick is to use the NF less than or equal to 7 so it picks up all the lines then grep out any empty lines. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
28
```
-2

cal 04 2012 | awk 'NF <= 7 { print $7 }' | grep -v "^$" | tail -1

javidjamae · 2012-05-03 16:57:45 764
Re-execute a command using a saved /proc/pid/cmdline file

Replace $CMDLINE_FILENAME with the name of the cmdline file you copied from /proc/pid, and $COMMAND with the command to execute with those arguments.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

tail -zn+2 $CMDLINE_FILENAME | xargs -0 $COMMAND

Sparkette · 2020-06-23 05:31:45 119

Quick scrape of recent mobile home dir file sync for Mac Admins - tested with shell: bash, Mac OSX 10.5

tail would be considered dull, but pair this with being able to push out unix commands over ARD, and life gets easier. (Same can be said for my TimeMachine scrape command, http://xrl.us/begrzb) Show Sample Output

-3

tail -n 20 ~/Library/Logs/FileSyncAgent.log

sacrilicious · 2009-02-19 05:05:21 7

Get top 10 largest directories under cwd

The pipe to head removes the listing of . as the largest directory.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

du | sort -n | tail -11 | head

phage · 2009-03-04 16:06:34 9
show system installation date
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

tune2fs -l $(df -P / | tail -n1 | cut -d' ' -f1 ) | grep 'Filesystem created:'

christian773 · 2010-05-29 08:15:25 4
to perform operation line by line in a file without using sed or awk

Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
here $i is line number on which you want to perform some action
```
-3

s=`head -$i fileName | tail -1`

harish · 2010-10-19 08:45:40 6
View last 100 lines of your SSH log
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

tail /var/log/auth.log -n 100

authtoken · 2011-05-29 21:00:58 4
‹ First < 9 10 11 12 >

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count and number lines of output, useful for counting number of matches

Write each FILE to standard output, with line numbers added. With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

Convert seconds to [DD:][HH:]MM:SS

Converts any number of seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds. sec2dhms() { declare -i SS="$1" D=$(( SS / 86400 )) H=$(( SS % 86400 / 3600 )) M=$(( SS % 3600 / 60 )) S=$(( SS % 60 )) [ "$D" -gt 0 ] && echo -n "${D}:" [ "$H" -gt 0 ] && printf "%02g:" "$H" printf "%02g:%02g\n" "$M" "$S" }

send tweets to twitter (and get user details)

great for outputting tweets from cron jobs and batch scripts

find and delete empty dirs, start in current working dir

Convert seconds to [DD:][HH:]MM:SS

Find usb device in realtime

Using this command you can track a moment when usb device was attached.

Test network speed without wasting disk

The above command will send 4GB of data from one host to the next over the network, without consuming any unnecessary disk on either the client nor the host. This is a quick and dirty way to benchmark network speed without wasting any time or disk space. Of course, change the byte size and count as necessary. This command also doesn't rely on any extra 3rd party utilities, as dd, ssh, cat, /dev/zero and /dev/null are installed on all major Unix-like operating systems.

Find the dates your debian/ubuntu packages were installed.

Find when debian packages were installed on a system.

Find the package that installed a command

Terminal - Show directories in the PATH, one per line with sed and bash3.X `here string'

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Commands using tail (292)

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