Get last n lines of a file, similar to tail

Question

I\'m writing a log file viewer for a web application and for that I want to paginate through the lines of the log file. The items in the file are line based with the newest

Answer 1

Update @papercrane solution to python3. Open the file with open(filename, 'rb') and:

def tail(f, window=20):
    """Returns the last `window` lines of file `f` as a list.
    """
    if window == 0:
        return []

    BUFSIZ = 1024
    f.seek(0, 2)
    remaining_bytes = f.tell()
    size = window + 1
    block = -1
    data = []

    while size > 0 and remaining_bytes > 0:
        if remaining_bytes - BUFSIZ > 0:
            # Seek back one whole BUFSIZ
            f.seek(block * BUFSIZ, 2)
            # read BUFFER
            bunch = f.read(BUFSIZ)
        else:
            # file too small, start from beginning
            f.seek(0, 0)
            # only read what was not read
            bunch = f.read(remaining_bytes)

        bunch = bunch.decode('utf-8')
        data.insert(0, bunch)
        size -= bunch.count('\n')
        remaining_bytes -= BUFSIZ
        block -= 1

    return ''.join(data).splitlines()[-window:]