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-rw-r--r--doc/coreutils.texi14
1 files changed, 11 insertions, 3 deletions
diff --git a/doc/coreutils.texi b/doc/coreutils.texi
index 7918aec6a..88e16503d 100644
--- a/doc/coreutils.texi
+++ b/doc/coreutils.texi
@@ -2839,14 +2839,22 @@ tail [@var{option}]@dots{} [@var{file}]@dots{}
@end example
If more than one @var{file} is specified, @command{tail} prints a
-one-line header consisting of:
+one-line header before the output for each @var{file}, consisting of:
@example
==> @var{file name} <==
@end example
-@noindent
-before the output for each @var{file}.
+For further processing of tail output, it can be useful to convert the
+file headers to line prefixes, which can be done like:
+
+@example
+tail @dots{} |
+awk '
+ /^==> .* <==$/ @{prefix=substr($0,5,length-8)":"; next@}
+ @{print prefix$0@}
+' | @dots{}
+@end example
@cindex BSD @command{tail}
GNU @command{tail} can output any amount of data (some other versions of