coreutils/src/uu/tail/README.md

Notes / ToDO

• Rudimentary tail implementation.

Missing features:

Flags with features

• --max-unchanged-stats : with --follow=name, reopen a FILE which has not changed size after N (default 5) iterations to see if it has been unlinked or renamed (this is the usual case of rotated log files). With inotify, this option is rarely useful.
• --retry : keep trying to open a file even when it is or becomes inaccessible; useful when follow‐ing by name, i.e., with --follow=name

Others

• The current implementation does not handle - as an alias for stdin.

Possible optimizations:

• Don't read the whole file if not using -f and input is regular file. Read in chunks from the end going backwards, reading each individual chunk forward.