Skip to main content
Unix & Linux

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

4
  • 1
    Unfortunately if the file is being written to, there is a potential race condition. The else-case race condition doesn't worry me too much, but the then-case race condition can lead to processing of a partial log line, which is the problem I'm trying to avoid. Commented Jun 13, 2018 at 18:02
  • I've solved this sort of race condition in similar contexts by first doing a du -b to get an exact byte size, and then doing a tail -c to only fetch that many bytes. I could do that here. Commented Jun 13, 2018 at 18:09
  • On the other hand, in practice skipping the last line unconditionally is probably going to be ok for my purposes. So if the simple trick I was hoping for doesn't exist, I might just do that. Commented Jun 13, 2018 at 18:12
  • @dshin: OK, I'm glad you found the right solution that works for you. Commented Jun 13, 2018 at 18:13