Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 04:10:17 -0800 (PST) From: Friedemann Becker <Friedemann.Becker@web.de> To: freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: bin/53288: tail will sometimes display more lines than it is told Message-ID: <200401141210.i0ECAHXN064256@freefall.freebsd.org>
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The following reply was made to PR bin/53288; it has been noted by GNATS. From: Friedemann Becker <Friedemann.Becker@web.de> To: freebsd-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.org Cc: Subject: Re: bin/53288: tail will sometimes display more lines than it is told Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 13:11:56 +0100 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------050206010607070606030305 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I wrote this little note for the tail.1 manpage. I am still new to this and I'm not sure, if this should be mentioned in the manpage or not. If the text is ok, please someone proofread and maybe commit it. Otherwise, some commentary would be nice. thanks --------------050206010607070606030305 Content-Type: text/plain; name="tail.1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline; filename="tail.1" --- tail.1.orig Tue Jan 13 00:18:41 2004 +++ tail.1 Tue Jan 13 00:50:54 2004 @@ -181,3 +181,22 @@ A .Nm command appeared in PWB UNIX. +.Sh BUGS +When +.Nm +is used on a file that is being written to, the number of lines (bytes +or blocks, respectively) of the output can be significantly different +from what has been specified by the +.Fl n , +.Fl c +or +.Fl b +option. This happens when data is is beeing appended to the file +after +.Nm +has calculated the starting point for the output. + +To avoid this send the data through a pipe, as in +.Dl "cat growing_file | tail -n 20" +.Pp +This should give correct results. --------------050206010607070606030305--
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