Use the tail command to display the last n lines of a file. There are several options to use with this command, we will look at two:

+n is used to display from line n to the end of the file (e.g. +17 would display from line 17 to the end of the file).

-n is used to display the last n lines of a file (e.g. -10 would display the last 10 lines of the file).

If you don't use the -n option the last 10 lines are displayed by default.

Command Format

tail [-n] filename

tail [+n] filename

n=number of lines

For example, to display the last 15 lines of the books.txt file the command would be:

tail -15 books.txt

Also, to display from line 20 to the end of the the books.txt file the command would be:

tail +20 books.txt