A Windows equivalent of the Unix tail command [clo

Question

I'm looking for the equivalent of the Unix 'tail' command that will allow me to watch the output of a log file while it is being written to.

Answer 1

I've always used Baretail for tailing in Windows. It's free and pretty nice.

Edit: for a better description of Baretail see this question

Answer 2

The tail command and many others are available in the Windows Resource Kit Tools package.

Answer 3

If you want to use Win32 ports of some Unix utilities (rather than installing Cygwin), I recommend GNU utilities for Win32.

Lighter weight than Cygwin and more portable.

Answer 4

With Windows PowerShell you can use:

Get-Content <file> -Wait

Answer 5

Anybody interested in a DOS CMD tail using batch commands (see below).

It's not prefect, and lines sometime repeat.

Usage: tail.bat -d tail.bat -f -f

@echo off
SETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONS ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
rem tail.bat -d <lines> <file>
rem tail.bat -f <file>

rem ****** MAIN ******
IF "%1"=="-d" GOTO displayfile
IF "%1"=="-f" GOTO followfile

GOTO end

rem ************
rem Show Last n lines of file
rem ************

:displayfile
SET skiplines=%2
SET sourcefile=%3

rem *** Get the current line count of file ***
FOR /F "usebackq tokens=3,3 delims= " %%l IN (`find /c /v "" %sourcefile%`) DO (call SET find_lc=%%l)

rem *** Calculate the lines to skip
SET /A skiplines=%find_lc%-!skiplines!

rem *** Display to screen line needed
more +%skiplines% %sourcefile%

GOTO end

rem ************
rem Show Last n lines of file & follow output
rem ************

:followfile
SET skiplines=0
SET findend_lc=0
SET sourcefile=%2

:followloop
rem *** Get the current line count of file ***
FOR /F "usebackq tokens=3,3 delims= " %%l IN (`find /c /v "" %sourcefile%`) DO (call SET find_lc=%%l)
FOR /F "usebackq tokens=3,3 delims= " %%l IN (`find /c /v "" %sourcefile%`) DO (call SET findend_lc=%%l)

rem *** Calculate the lines to skip
SET /A skiplines=%findend_lc%-%find_lc%
SET /A skiplines=%find_lc%-%skiplines%

rem *** Display to screen line when file updated
more +%skiplines% %sourcefile%

goto followloop

:end

Answer 6

If you do not want to install anything at all you can "build your own" batch file that does the job from standard Windows commands. Here are some pointers as to how to do it.

1) Using find /c /v "" yourinput.file, get the number of lines in your input file. The output is something like:

---------- T.TXT: 15

2) Using for /f, parse this output to get the number 15.

3) Using set /a, calculate the number of head lines that needs to be skipped

4) Using for /f "skip=n" skip the head lines and echo/process the tail lines.

If I find the time, I will build such a batch file and post it back here.