Passing variable to tail -n command 1

[LadyDragon]

Hi! I was hoping someone could help me with this. I'm working in Korn shell and am trying to pass a variable to a tail command and am having problems doing this.

tail -"$var" > out.txt

The quoted part is where I'm having problems. Ideas would be appreciated! Thanks!

Juls

 

[SamBones]

Try...

eval tail -${var} \> out.txt

Hope this helps.

 

[SamBones]

Hmmm, actually this should work too...

tail -${var} > out.txt

But this isn't specifying what you're tailing. You need to either pipe something to it, or specify a file name to tail...

tail -${var} file.txt > out.txt
# or
some_command | tail -${var} > out.txt

Hope this helps.

 

[LadyDragon]

Thanks Sambones. The lack of input file was a cut'n'paste error on my part. Your suggestion worked!

Thanks!
Juls