tail: Show Me the End

You have a log file that's been collecting data for months. You only care about the most recent entries:

tail log.txt

Last 10 lines. The freshest data. That's tail.

Specifying How Many Lines

Last 5 lines:

tail -n 5 file.txt

Last 50 lines:

tail -n 50 file.txt

Or shorthand:

tail -5 file.txt
tail -50 file.txt

Skip the Header

Here's a trick: tail -n +2 means "from line 2 onward" - effectively skipping the header:

tail -n +2 data.csv

All data except the first line. Useful for CSVs with headers.

In Pipelines

Bottom 10 results after sorting:

sort -n scores.txt | tail

Last few errors:

grep "error" log.txt | tail -5

Just the Last Line

tail -n 1 file.txt

Sometimes that's all you need.

Quick Reference

| What you want | Command | |---------------|---------| | Last 10 lines | tail file | | Last N lines | tail -n N file or tail -N file | | Skip first line | tail -n +2 file | | Just last line | tail -n 1 file |

See Also

• head - the opposite (beginning of file)

• cat - whole file

Practice

In CTF challenges, tail helps you check recent log entries and grab the lowest values from sorted data.

tail is for recency. When you want the latest, look at the end.