tail
                                   ----
            Documentation for version 1.0, on August 13th, 1991

                              by Bruno Costa



WARNING

  Although  this  program  is freely distributable (see COPYRIGHT below), I
would  appreciate  if  you  take the time to write me a line or two (E-Mail
please)  if  you  are  using  any of my programs or if you have any kind of
ideas  or  suggestions  (This is not too much to ask, is it?).  If you feel
particularly  generous,  I  would  like  to  receive a disk with any useful
programs you have written, preferrably with source.  Thanks!


DESCRIPTION

  Tail is a simple utility that outputs just a few of the last lines of any
file.   It is just like the type command of AmigaDOS, but it types just the
last lines of files.  It may be used to peek at the contents of a text file
without  having  to  edit  or  type  the  entire  file.   Note that tail is
implemented in such a way that the input file is normally not entirely read
from  the  beginning.  This will provide a noticeable performance increase,
specially for big files in hard disks or for floppy users.


OPTIONS

  usage: tail [-?] [-<nlines>] [files ...]

  The  option  '?'  prints  just a usage message to stderr.  The '<nlines>'
option allows the user to determine how many of the last lines of the file
will be printed (defaults to 10).

  If run without any file name in the command line, tail will show the
last 10 lines of stdin.


EXAMPLES

  to see the last 10 lines of your startup-sequence:
    tail s:startup-sequence

  to see the last 24 lines of the standard input:
    tail -24


BUGS

  The  maximum  line  lenght is limited to 256 characters (it can be easily
changed in the source code).
  If  the  average  lenght  of the last lines of a file is greater than 90,
some of the lines will not be printed.


AUTHOR

  The  accompanying  program  and  this documentation were written by Bruno
Costa.  He can be reached in the following ways:

  E-Mail: bruno@brlncc.bitnet (InterNet)
          bruno@BRLNCC        (BitNet)

  Mail:   Bruno Costa
          Rua Almirante Guilhem 454/102 bloco 1
          Leblon - Rio de Janeiro
          RJ 22440
          BRAZIL


COPYRIGHT

  This program is copyrighted by Bruno Costa.  It may be freely distributed
if  and  only if the source code, the documentation and the executables are
provided  in  original form.  It may be included in Public Domain/Shareware
compilations,  like  the  one  organized  by  Fred  Fish, as long as just a
nominal fee is charged for each disk (no more than US$10 per disk), and may
also be uploaded to BBS's or network services like BIX and CompuServe.


DISCLAIMER

  The author makes no warranty of any kind with respect to this product and
explicitly  disclaims  any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness
for  any  particular  purpose.

 PERMSSN    UID  GID    PACKED    SIZE  RATIO METHOD CRC     STAMP          NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
[generic]                   32      37  86.5% -lh1- 9778 Jan 21  1992 tail/.info
[generic]                 5985    9944  60.2% -lh1- 5249 Jan 18  1992 tail/tail
[generic]                 1275    2997  42.5% -lh1- d64d Jan 18  1992 tail/tail.c
[generic]                 1514    2913  52.0% -lh1- dcf3 Jan 18  1992 tail/tail.doc
[generic]                  239     353  67.7% -lh1- e000 Jan 18  1992 tail/tail.doc.info
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
 Total         5 files    9045   16244  55.7%            Aug 15  1992