On 07/06/19 21:26, Jon Hart wrote: > I have a file that does yet exist, but when it does finally exist I want to > skip the first line and follow the remainder of the file. tail -F -n +2 > should do this, however it does not skip the first line -- it starts > printing at the first line. > > In one shell, fire up tail on a file that does not yet exist and tell it to > start printing at the second line: > > $ tail -F -n +2 /tmp/does_not_exist > tail: cannot open '/tmp/does_not_exist' for reading: No such file or > directory > > In another shell, write several lines to the non-existent file: > > $ echo -e "line1\nline2\nline3" > /tmp/does_not_exist > > Now see that tail printed out all three lines rather than skipping the > first: > > tail: '/tmp/does_not_exist' has appeared; following new file > line1 > line2 > line3 > > > tail/coreutils 8.28 > > I don't see anything in the help that hints at what might be happening > here. Smells like a bug. Can anyone else confirm?
Well really -n is ignored when files are replaced. I.E. -F will just dump the entire file when it's been detected as replaced. Consider subsequent replacements of the file. You wouldn't want --lines=NUM to be honored on each replacement. Now maybe we could treat --lines=+NUM specially, and honor on each replacment, assuming it's skipping a header or something. Though that sounds too special case to be done by the current options at least. cheers, Pádraig
