How to get the last line of a file using cat command

Question

I am writing a shell script in OSX(unix) environment. I have a file called test.properties with the following content:

cat test.properties gets the following output:

//This file is intended for 
//blah blah purposes
123

Using cat command, how can I get only the last line of the file ?

It's probable because this is one of the "How do I use X to do Y?" questions where X does not do Y. Such questions are not as useful as "How do I do Y?" or "What does X do?". — Oskar Skog, Oct 18 '16 at 20:37
// , Those of us who think X will do Y, when, in reality, Z does Y (ahem) do benefit from such questions, in spite of their dubious pedagogy. — Nathan Basanese, Sep 26 '18 at 20:43

score 119 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 18 '16 at 12:42

119

Don't use cat. tail was meant for this usecase exactly:

$ tail -1 ./test.properties

answered Oct 18 '16 at 12:42

Mureinik

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last small question: if I want to get the `last but second line` or `last but third line` ? – TheWaterProgrammer Oct 18 '16 at 13:02
15

combine tail and head for example: `tail -2 | head -1` – Jean-Baptiste Yunès Oct 18 '16 at 15:33
1

// , très élégant – Nathan Basanese Sep 26 '18 at 20:47

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 18 '16 at 15:18

Don't have enough reputation to comment Mureinik's post to answer your last question, but if you want to display a part of a file between known lines, you can try sed -n '<line1>,<line2>p <filename>.

If you don't know the lines, mix tail and sed : For your file :

tail -r test.properties | sed -n '2p'

How to get the last line of a file using cat command

2 Answers2