`octa --tail`¶

Print the last N rows of a file, the way Unix tail does for text files, except Octa understands the binary formats too. Default 20 rows.

Synopsis¶

octa --tail FILE [-n N] [-f tsv|json|csv] [--rows N|all]

Flag	Default	Meaning
`-n N`, `--lines N`	`20`	Number of trailing rows to print. Must be ≥ 0.
`-f`, `--format`	`tsv`	Output format (see CLI overview).
`--rows N\\|all`	5 M	Initial-load row cap for streaming formats (see Performance).

Examples¶

Default: last 20 rows as TSV¶

octa --tail sales.parquet

Custom row count¶

octa --tail sales.csv -n 5             # last 5 rows
octa --tail sales.csv -n 1             # just the final row

JSON output for downstream tools¶

octa --tail sales.parquet -n 3 -f json

Performance¶

For streaming formats (Parquet, CSV, TSV), Octa loads the standard initial-load row cap (5 million rows by default), then keeps the last N rows of that loaded window. This means that on a file larger than the cap, --tail reflects the end of the loaded window, not necessarily the true end of the file. To tail the genuine end of a very large file, raise the cap:

octa --tail huge.parquet -n 20 --rows all

For non-streaming formats (Excel, SQLite, JSON, etc.) the whole table is loaded into memory and the last N rows are sliced off.

Notes¶

-n 0 prints just the header row.
For multi-table sources (SQLite, DuckDB), Octa loads the first table.
Like --head, TAB and newline characters in cells are replaced with spaces in TSV output; use -f csv or -f json for lossless output.

octa --tail¶