I asked ChatGPT 3.5 in Azure AI whether we could run Tail in Windows, and this is it’s response:
Sure, here's a PowerShell function that emulates the tail command from Linux:
function tail($filepath, $count = 10) {
$file = Get-Item $filepath
$stream = $file.Open([System.IO.FileMode]::Open, [System.IO.FileAccess]::Read, [System.IO.FileShare]::ReadWrite)
$reader = New-Object System.IO.StreamReader($stream)
# Move the reader to the end of the file
$reader.BaseStream.Seek(0, [System.IO.SeekOrigin]::End)
# Read the last N lines of the file
$lines = New-Object System.Collections.Generic.List[string]
for ($i = 0; $i -lt $count; $i++) {
$pos = $reader.BaseStream.Position - 2
# Move backwards from the end of the file until we find a newline character
while ($pos -ge 0) {
$reader.BaseStream.Seek($pos, [System.IO.SeekOrigin]::Begin)
$char = $reader.Read()
if ($char -eq [char]::NewLine) {
# Found a newline character, so read the line
$line = $reader.ReadLine()
$lines.Insert(0, $line)
break
}
$pos--
}
# Move back to the end of the file if we reached the beginning
if ($pos -lt 0) {
$reader.BaseStream.Seek(0, [System.IO.SeekOrigin]::Begin)
}
}
$reader.Dispose()
$stream.Dispose()
# Output the last N lines of the file
return $lines
}
To use this function, simply call it with the path to the file you want to tail and the number of lines you want to show:
tail "C:\Path\To\File.txt" 10
This will show the last 10 lines of the file. You can adjust the number of lines by changing the $count parameter.