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How to print just the last line of a file?

PJ Brunet
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yael
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5 Answers5

118
$ cat file | awk 'END{print}'

Originally answered by Ventero

PJ Brunet
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Joey
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    I think the original question specified "awk" but since the question changed to be more generic, this answer made no sense. So I improved the answer a little bit. Overall, "tail" is a great solution, but "awk" might offer more nuanced control. – PJ Brunet Apr 22 '20 at 06:52
32

Use the right tool for the job. Since you want to get the last line of a file, tail is the appropriate tool for the job, especially if you have a large file. Tail's file processing algorithm is more efficient in this case. 

tail -n 1 file

If you really want to use awk, 

awk 'END{print}' file

EDIT : tail -1 file deprecated

Kryten
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ghostdog74
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Is it a must to use awk for this? Why not just use tail -n 1 myFile ?

RonK
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    @yael Not at all; `tail -1` will be way faster than `awk` for a large file. I tried on an ~3m line file; tail was instantaneous while awk took .44s – Michael Mrozek Jun 20 '10 at 19:54
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    @yael. tail is specifically meant for processing the file from the "end". Therefore, its faster than awk. Because awk processes files from the beginning. The algorithms are different. – ghostdog74 Jun 21 '10 at 10:48
  • @yael is right - in the sence that `awk` (3B) is faster to type than `tail` (4B). When it comes to speed - well `tail` has a simpler task, and no script to parse before execution. However, @ghostdog74 is not right about "working from the end". If the input is piped, `tail` also needs to work from the beginning. And not to mention `tail -n +N`. – Tomasz Gandor Aug 01 '14 at 08:08
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    I wanted the first field of the last line of the file (`awk 'END { print $1 }'`). While it's not what the OP asked, the question helped and was easier to search for than "first field of last line of file" – jake Dec 09 '14 at 15:26
8

Find out the last line of a file:

  1. Using sed (stream editor): sed -n '$p' fileName

  2. Using tail: tail -1 fileName

  3. using awk: awk 'END { print }' fileName

Lucas Zamboulis
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rishabh
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You can achieve this using sed as well. However, I personally recommend using tail or awk.

Anyway, if you wish to do by sed, here are two ways:

Method 1:

sed '$!d' filename

Method2:

sed -n '$p' filename

Here, filename is the name of the file that has data to be analysed.

cmaher
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Tapan Avasthi
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