date;tail

jwonnacott · 06-16-2013, 01:12 PM

I saw the command date;tail (some file) used recently and wondered what it does. I use tail a lot to watch log files etc. but have never seen date;tail before.
I tried googling it but, of course, google don't search for what you want, they search for what they think you want!

Many thanks,

James.

acid_kewpie · 06-16-2013, 01:13 PM

the command? it's two commands, it's date, and then tail. so it prints the date and then just hangs there tailing stdin. it's not a "thing".

jwonnacott · 06-16-2013, 01:21 PM

Thanks Chris, can't think of a use for that but at least I know what it does now.

chrism01 · 06-17-2013, 12:06 AM

Could be handy when later referenced via the history cmd. Some people even set history to automatically tag the date/time onto the each history entry.