README.md
1[](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/nxadm/tail)
2
3# tail functionality in Go
4
5nxadm/tail provides a Go library that emulates the features of the BSD `tail`
6program. The library comes with full support for truncation/move detection as
7it is designed to work with log rotation tools. The library works on all
8operating systems supported by Go, including POSIX systems like Linux and
9*BSD, and MS Windows. Go 1.9 is the oldest compiler release supported.
10
11A simple example:
12
13```Go
14// Create a tail
15t, err := tail.TailFile(
16 "/var/log/nginx.log", tail.Config{Follow: true, ReOpen: true})
17if err != nil {
18 panic(err)
19}
20
21// Print the text of each received line
22for line := range t.Lines {
23 fmt.Println(line.Text)
24}
25```
26
27See [API documentation](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/nxadm/tail).
28
29## Installing
30
31 go get github.com/nxadm/tail/...
32
33## History
34
35This project is an active, drop-in replacement for the
36[abandoned](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPE_Helion) Go tail library at
37[hpcloud](https://github.com/hpcloud/tail). Next to
38[addressing open issues/PRs of the original project](https://github.com/nxadm/tail/issues/6),
39nxadm/tail continues the development by keeping up to date with the Go toolchain
40(e.g. go modules) and dependencies, completing the documentation, adding features
41and fixing bugs.
42
43## Examples
44Examples, e.g. used to debug an issue, are kept in the [examples directory](/examples).
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