[sclug] Redirecting Tail to a file preserving end of lines

[Alex Butcher]

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005, Dickon Hood wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 18, 2005 at 14:18:35 +0100, Sapan Ganguly wrote:
> : Hello, how are you all?
>
> : I've been scratching my head over this one for the past hour or two,
> : how do I take the last line of a bunch of files and put them into a
> : new file?  This is what I have been trying -
>
> : # tail --lines=1 --silent *.csv >> newfile
>
> : For some reason the end of lines aren't preserved, newfile ends up
> : being one really long line.
>
> : I've tried a few other ways but I get the same result.
>
> : Any ideas?
>
> for i in *.csv; do tail -1 $i; done > newfile
>
> Works for me.

Alternatively:

 	tail --lines=1 *.csv | grep -v '==>' >>newfile

The behaviour Sapan describes seems to be triggered by the --silent option.
I'm not sure whether this is a bug, or intentional behaviour.

Dickon's approach looks a bit more robust to me (I don't know if tail can
sometimes insert lines other than those containing '==>').

Best Regards,
Alex.
-- 
Alex Butcher      Brainbench MVP for Internet Security: www.brainbench.com
Bristol, UK                      Need reliable and secure network systems?
PGP/GnuPG ID:0x271fd950                         <http://www.assursys.com/>