Read last line from file

Question

I\'ve been bumping into a problem. I have a log on a Linux box in which is written the output from several running processes. This file can get really big sometimes and I ne

Answer 1

Here is a compilation of the answers here wrapped into a function which can specify how many lines should be returned.

function getLastLines($path, $totalLines) {
  $lines = array();

  $fp = fopen($path, 'r');
  fseek($fp, -1, SEEK_END);
  $pos = ftell($fp);
  $lastLine = "";

  // Loop backword until we have our lines or we reach the start
  while($pos > 0 && count($lines) < $totalLines) {

    $C = fgetc($fp);
    if($C == "\n") {
      // skip empty lines
      if(trim($lastLine) != "") {
        $lines[] = $lastLine;
      }
      $lastLine = '';
    } else {
      $lastLine = $C.$lastLine;
    }
    fseek($fp, $pos--);
  }

  $lines = array_reverse($lines);

  return $lines;
}