How to tail -f the latest log file with a given pattern

Question

I work with some log system which creates a log file every hour, like follows:

SoftwareLog.2010-08-01-08
SoftwareLog.2010-08-01-09
SoftwareLog.2010-08-01-10
         


        

Answer 1

We have daily rotating log files as: /var/log/grails/customer-2020-01-03.log. To tail the latest one, the following command worked fine for me:

tail -f /var/log/grails/customer-`date +'%Y-%m-%d'`.log

(NOTE: no space after the + sign in the expression)

So, for you, the following should work (if you are in the same directory of the logs):

tail -f SoftwareLog.`date +'%Y-%m-%d-%H'`