General - Last entry in a file.

Does anyone know how I can read/report/display the last entry in a file? I have a file that I receive everyday but I want to only be able to report out the last entry or display the last entry as the file is quite large but new entries get written to it on a daily basis.

In such I will like it to display only entry for each current day from a big file.

I am no programmer so please will like your help for something simple.

Thanks

How is the file structured? If its a CSV file, it could be as simple as using the "tail" unix command to retrieve the last row (line). There are various approaches, depending on how the file is formatted.

You have not given sufficient information to answer this -

* what OS is it on - Unix, Linux, MacOS, Windows?

* what is the file format?
* is it text or binary?
* how are the entries defined?

As NovaX says, if the file is text and if the entries are single lines, and if you are on a UNIXy machine, then you can do it with tail -n1 <filename>.

But that is a lot of ifs. If the file is an Access database on Windows then the answer is going to be very different.

Dave

Hi Hi and thanks for your response.

No it is not a CSv.

It is log files from Cisco switches so it is a txt docuemnt. I am using WindowsXP.

Entries are defined as such.
Feb 15 23:57:17: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface FastEthernet0/20, changed state to up
Feb 16 01:04:36: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface FastEthernet0/1, changed state to down
Feb 16 01:04:37: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface FastEthernet0/1, changed state to down
Feb 16 01:04:39: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface FastEthernet0/1, changed state to up
Feb 16 01:04:40: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface FastEthernet0/1, changed state to up
Feb 16 01:04:49: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface FastEthernet0/1, changed state to down
Feb 16 01:04:51: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface FastEthernet0/1, changed state to up
Feb 16 22:10:27: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface FastEthernet0/10, changed state to down
Feb 16 22:10:28: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface FastEthernet0/10, changed state to down
Feb 16 22:10:30: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface FastEthernet0/10, changed state to up

I will really ike the last 10 or 20 entries or entries that appear on certain dates.

Thanks