Re: tail for a list of files

[R. G. Newbury]

> From: Jonathan Ryshpan 
> Subject: Re: tail for a list of files
> To: [e-mail]
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> On Sat, 2018-03-03 at 11:15 -0500, bruce wrote:
> > Trying to figure out how to do a single line cmd (it should be
> > possible right??) to do a tail -5 for a list of files???
> >
> > I thought I could combine find with exec/xargs and tail to generate
> > the list of files/tail data.. But couldn't figure out the syntax..
> >
> > find /foo -name "*dog.dat ... tail -5    << obviously not correct.
> > but
> > what would work?
>
> I think the easy way is
>    $ find /foo -name "*dog.dat" | xargs tail -n5
> or am I missing something?

I created 4 pdf files using 'touch 123.pdf' through '126.pdf'

find .  -name "*.pdf" | tail -n 2

does not 'find' the files in canonical order: it outputs 124.pdf and 126.pdf

Neither does .... | xargs tail -n 2

Trying:
  tail -n 2 $(find .  -name "*.pdf")
gives:
==> ./125.pdf <==

==> ./123.pdf <==

==> ./124.pdf <==

==> ./126.pdf <==

NOT in order and ignores the 'tail -n 2'

tail -n 2 $(find .  -name "*.pdf"| sort) gives the files in order, but 
ignores the tail count.

HOWEVER this works:
find .  -name "*.pdf" | sort | tail -n 2
./125.pdf
./126.pdf

Geoff