[talkingquickly]

tail -f filename should definitely make the list, essential for watching what's appended to log files in real time.

[alexfoo]

I prefer:-

tail -F filename

as most of the logfiles I need to watch tend to wrap at some point and 'tail -f' doesn't check for inode changes.

(-F is a non-standard option, it's there on GNU's [EDIT] tail binary and OS-X but not Solaris for example).

[talkingquickly]

Thanks, very useful - didn't know that!

[vacri]

less +F filename does the same thing, but loses the following when the logfile gets rotated. Does the same thing happen to tail -f? (edit: alexfoo answered that tail -F tracks the file properly)

one benefit to less +F is that you can cancel the following and read normally in less.

[masklinn]

> one benefit to less +F is that you can cancel the following and read normally in less.

Yeah, including doing backwards and forward searches, that is very handy