The tail command is a very commonly used command to pull the last number of lines from a file. This is extremely useful when you want to look through error logs to trouble shoot an issue. You can watch a file live or look back as many lines as needed.
Synopsis
tail [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Examples
View the last 10 lines of the error log:
tail error_log
Follow the error log live:
tail -f error_log
Show the last 300 lines of the error log:
tail -300 error_log
or
tail-n300 error_log
Common Flags
-f – Output the appended data when the file grows
-n – Output the last number of lines in the file
-c – Output the last K byte of the file
-v – Always output headers