tail
From NetBSD Wiki
The tail(1) command works just like head, only instead of the top 10 lines, it shows the bottom 10 lines of a file:
$ tail wocky.txt "And, has thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!' He chortled in his joy. `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. $
As with head, you can change the default number of lines by using the -n switch:
$ tail -n 2 wocky All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. $
tail(1) has one major difference with head: It supports an extra -f option ("follow"). This option tells tail(1) to wait for more input after it has read an end-of-file. This is nice for keeping a tap on some log you want to follow as it grows.
$ cat my-story To be or not to be... $ tail -f my-story To be or not to be... <now tail hangs at EOF. Switch to another terminal and enter:> $ echo "WTF is the answer?" >> my-story <switch back, and it will show> WTF is the answer?
You can of course just stop the process with ^C when you tire of waiting for more.
