Unix tail equivalent command in Windows Powershell

Question

I have to look at the last few lines of a large file (typical size is 500MB-2GB). I am looking for a equivalent of Unix command tail for Windows Powershell. A f

Answer 1

There have been many valid answers, however, none of them has the same syntax as tail in linux. The following function can be stored in your $Home\Documents\PowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1 for persistency (see powershell profiles documentation for more details).

This allows you to call...

tail server.log
tail -n 5 server.log
tail -f server.log
tail -Follow -Lines 5 -Path server.log

which comes quite close to the linux syntax.

function tail {
<#
    .SYNOPSIS
        Get the last n lines of a text file.
    .PARAMETER Follow
        output appended data as the file grows
    .PARAMETER Lines
        output the last N lines (default: 10)
    .PARAMETER Path
        path to the text file
    .INPUTS
        System.Int
        IO.FileInfo
    .OUTPUTS
        System.String
    .EXAMPLE
        PS> tail c:\server.log
    .EXAMPLE
        PS> tail -f -n 20 c:\server.log
#>
    [CmdletBinding()]
    [OutputType('System.String')]
    Param(
        [Alias("f")]
        [parameter(Mandatory=$false)]
        [switch]$Follow,

        [Alias("n")]
        [parameter(Mandatory=$false)]
        [Int]$Lines = 10,

        [parameter(Mandatory=$true, Position=5)]
        [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
        [IO.FileInfo]$Path
    )
    if ($Follow)
    {
        Get-Content -Path $Path -Tail $Lines -Wait
    }
    else
    {
        Get-Content -Path $Path -Tail $Lines
    }
}