tailf命令几乎等同于tail -f,严格说来应该与tail --follow=name更相似些。当文件改名之后它也能继续跟踪,特别适合于日志文件的跟踪(follow the growth of a log file)。与tail -f不同的是,如果文件不增长,它不会去访问磁盘文件(It is similar to tail -f but does not access the file when it isnot growing. This has the side effect ofnot updating the access time for the file, so a filesystem flush does not occur periodically when no log activity is happening.)。tailf特别适合那些便携机上跟踪日志文件,因为它能省电,因为减少了磁盘访问嘛(tailf is extremely useful for monitoring log files on a laptop when logging is infrequent and the user desires that the hard disk spin down to conserve battery life.)。tailf命令不是个脚本,而是一个用C代码编译后的二进制执行文件,某些Linux安装之后没有这个命令,本文提供了怎么编译安装tailf命令的方法。