---
name: "tail"
section: "1"
platform: "openbsd"
package: "man"
version: "8.0-current-20261101"
release: "OpenBSD 8.0-current (2026-11-01)"
platforms: ["linux", "freebsd", "openbsd", "macos"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/tail"
---

# tail(1)

display the last part of a file

## NAME

**tail** – display the last part of a file

## SYNOPSIS

**tail** \[**-f** \| **-r**\]\[ **-b** *number* \| **-c** *number* \| **-n** *number* \| **-***number*\] \[*file ...*\]

## DESCRIPTION

The **tail** utility displays the contents of *file* or, by default, its standard input, to the standard output.

The display begins at a byte, line, or 512-byte block location in the input. Numbers having a leading plus (‘+’) sign are relative to the beginning of the input, for example, **-c** **+2** starts the display at the second byte of the input. Numbers having a leading minus (‘-’) sign or no explicit sign are relative to the end of the input, for example, **-n** **2** displays the last two lines of the input. The default starting location is **-n** **10**, or the last 10 lines of the input.

The options are as follows:

- **-b** *number*

  The location is *number* 512-byte blocks.

- **-c** *number*

  The location is *number* bytes.

- **-f**

  Do not stop when end-of-file is reached; instead, wait for additional data to be appended to the input. If the file is replaced (i.e., the inode number changes), **tail** will reopen the file and continue. If the file is truncated, **tail** will reset its position to the beginning. This makes **tail** more useful for watching log files that may get rotated. The **-f** option is ignored if there are no *file* arguments and the standard input is a pipe or a FIFO.

- **-n** *number* \| **-***number*

  The location is *number* lines.

- **-r**

  The **-r** option causes the input to be displayed in reverse order, by line. Additionally, this option changes the meaning of the **-b**, **-c**, and **-n** options. When the **-r** option is specified, these options specify the number of bytes, lines or 512-byte blocks to display, instead of the bytes, lines, or blocks from the beginning or end of the input from which to begin the display. The default for the **-r** option is to display all of the input.

If more than one file is specified, **tail** precedes the output of each file with the following, in order to distinguish files:

```
==> file <==
```

## EXIT STATUS

The **tail** utility exits 0 on success, and \>0 if an error occurs.

## EXAMPLES

To display the last 500 lines of the file *foo*:

```
$ tail -500 foo
```

Keep */var/log/messages* open, displaying to the standard output anything appended to the file:

```
$ tail -f /var/log/messages
```

## SEE ALSO

[cat(1)](/cat/1.md), [head(1)](/head/1.md), [sed(1)](/sed/1.md)

## STANDARDS

The **tail** utility is compliant with the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”) specification.

The flags \[**-br**\] are extensions to that specification.

The historic command line syntax of **tail** is supported by this implementation. The only difference between this implementation and historic versions of **tail**, once the command line syntax translation has been done, is that the **-b**, **-c** and **-n** options modify the **-r** option, i.e., **-r** **-c** **4** displays the last 4 characters of the last line of the input, while the historic tail (using the historic syntax **-4cr**) would ignore the **-c** option and display the last 4 lines of the input.

## HISTORY

A **tail** command first appeared outside of Bell Labs in PWB/UNIX 1.0.