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

Graphical log viewers, while they might be very good for viewing log files, don't meet the need for a command line utility that can be incorporated into scripts (or batch files). Often such a simple and general-purpose command can be used as part of a specialized solution for a particular environment. Graphical methods don't lend themselves readily to such use.

Answer 2

If you use PowerShell then this works:

Get-Content filenamehere -Wait -Tail 30

Posting Stefan's comment from below, so people don't miss it

PowerShell 3 introduces a -Tail parameter to include only the last x lines

Answer 3

I prefer TailMe because of the possibility to watch several log files simultaneously in one window: http://www.dschensky.de/Software/Staff/tailme_en.htm

Answer 4

You can get tail as part of Cygwin.

Answer 5

I haven't seen Log Expert anywhere among answers here.

It's customizable and is quite good for going around log files. So far it's the best Windows graphical log viewer for me.

Answer 6

There are quite a number of options, however all of them have flaws with more advanced features.

• The Windows Server 2003 Tools provides a simple tail that can be downloaded with the Resource Kit Tools. It is too limited in many respects (locks followed file, lacks many options like --pid), however will do for the basic task of tracking a file.

• GnuWin32 tail is buggy (α β γ) - things like -f just plain don't work.

• UnxUtils tail seems better (-f works, but --pid seems not to, -n but not --lines=n fails with -f), but appears to be a dead project.

• Cygwin is a big ugly mush, could perhaps just use the DLL and coreutils package - but still has problems like --pid not working with native win32 processes.