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Asked: 2026-05-22T16:40:40+00:00

Two questions, but only stuck on one. Feel that I need the first one

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Two questions, but only stuck on one. Feel that I need the first one so someone can help me make sense of it.

4) Use cat and /dev/null to create an empty file.

5) Start a background process that continuously prints the last line of the file created in #4..

So what i did for number 4 was: 

cat /dev/null > emptyfile

This created an empty file. Okay so I am happy with that. The next question however confuses me. How can I read the last line of an empty file? Better yet how do I continuously do this? Running it in the background isn’t a problem. Anyone have any ideas? We haven’t covered scripting yet so I don’t think that plays a role. As always, thanks for the help.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Use the UNIX command “tail” with the -f option. That will continuously print out contents from the file to the terminal as it is added to the file.

    Example:

    tail -f emptyfile

    You can terminate the tail process by typing Ctrl + C.

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