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authorAaron Campbell <aaron@cvs.openbsd.org>2000-03-11 21:40:09 +0000
committerAaron Campbell <aaron@cvs.openbsd.org>2000-03-11 21:40:09 +0000
commit80e5779001a9337a84f29f2a1e46f0022fb98026 (patch)
treee15e37ecf0918c142b82398da2f0dee4a897b4ca /usr.bin/tail/tail.1
parentd7d5044e2ea6ec17428055f7a436dfe704ec1fb7 (diff)
Various cleanups and standardizations.
Diffstat (limited to 'usr.bin/tail/tail.1')
-rw-r--r--usr.bin/tail/tail.134
1 files changed, 21 insertions, 13 deletions
diff --git a/usr.bin/tail/tail.1 b/usr.bin/tail/tail.1
index 1d368fcff4c..2f9e133bf64 100644
--- a/usr.bin/tail/tail.1
+++ b/usr.bin/tail/tail.1
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-.\" $OpenBSD: tail.1,v 1.8 2000/01/22 02:17:49 aaron Exp $
+.\" $OpenBSD: tail.1,v 1.9 2000/03/11 21:40:04 aaron Exp $
.\" $NetBSD: tail.1,v 1.4 1994/11/23 07:42:13 jtc Exp $
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1990, 1991, 1993
@@ -61,17 +61,20 @@ or, by default, its standard input, to the standard output.
.Pp
The display begins at a byte, line or 512-byte block location in the
input.
-Numbers having a leading plus (``+'') sign are relative to the beginning
-of the input, for example,
-.Dq -c +2
+Numbers having a leading plus
+.Pq Ql +
+sign are relative to the beginning of the input, for example,
+.Ic -c +2
starts the display at the second
byte of the input.
-Numbers having a leading minus (``-'') sign or no explicit sign are
+Numbers having a leading minus
+.Pq Ql -
+sign or no explicit sign are
relative to the end of the input, for example,
-.Dq -n 2
+.Ic -n 2
displays the last two lines of the input.
The default starting location is
-.Dq -n 10 ,
+.Ic -n 10 ,
or the last 10 lines of the input.
.Pp
The options are as follows:
@@ -90,12 +93,14 @@ The
option causes
.Nm
to not stop when end-of-file is reached, but rather to wait for additional
-data to be appended to the input. If the file is replaced (i.e., the
-inode number changes),
+data to be appended to the input.
+If the file is replaced (i.e., the inode number changes),
.Nm
-will reopen the file and continue. If the file is truncated,
+will reopen the file and continue.
+If the file is truncated,
.Nm
-will reset its position back to the beginning. This makes
+will reset its position back to the beginning.
+This makes
.Nm
more useful for watching log files that may get rotated.
The
@@ -164,8 +169,11 @@ and
.Fl n
options modify the
.Fl r
-option, i.e. ``-r -c 4'' displays the last 4 characters of the last line
-of the input, while the historic tail (using the historic syntax ``-4cr'')
+option, i.e.,
+.Ic -r -c 4
+displays the last 4 characters of the last line
+of the input, while the historic tail (using the historic syntax
+.Ic -4cr )
would ignore the
.Fl c
option and display the last 4 lines of the input.