How do I get the last non-empty line of a file using tail in Bash?

Posted by debugger on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by debugger
Published on 2010-04-14T15:52:08Z Indexed on 2010/04/14 16:03 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 150

Filed under:

tail

|

bash

|

last

|

line

|

empty

How do I get the last non-empty line using tail under Bash shell?

For example, my_file.txt looks like this:

hello
hola
bonjour
(empty line)
(empty line)

Obviously, if I do tail -n 1 my_file.txt I will get an empty line. In my case I want to get bonjour. How do I do that?

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about tail

The Long Tail and Short Tail of Search Keywords

as seen on Ezine Articles - Search for 'Ezine Articles'
Should keywords be short so that people can find them easily or should they be two or three word phrases to enable better ranking? Read on to find out. >>> More
Looking for a windows equivalent of the unix tail command

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm looking for the equivalent of the unix 'tail' command that will allow me to watch the output of a log file while it is being written to. >>> More
SEO & SEM Long Tail Keyword Marketing Strategy

as seen on Ezine Articles - Search for 'Ezine Articles'
Long tail marketing strategies for SEO & SEM often return higher conversion rates by up to 200% as compared to short tail generic keyword terms. These long tail keyword terms can be extremely profitable for SEM (search engine marketing) in terms of lower cost or bid for keywords and larger returns… >>> More
Sting in the tail for web's video codec search

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
<b>ZDNet:</b> "The search for the next-generation video codec for the open web has reached an impasse. Few of the options are truly open or free, and those that are free are not being pushed by the major forces." >>> More
Sorting a list in OCaml

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi All, Here is the code on sorting any given list: let rec sort lst = match lst with [] -> [] | head :: tail -> insert head (sort tail) and insert elt lst = match lst with [] -> [elt] | head :: tail -> if elt <= head then elt :: lst else head :: insert elt… >>> More

Related posts about bash

launching a program from bash causes bash to go to new prompt

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
When I run a program from the console, e.g. me@box:~$ firefox I expect the console to log error messages (I think this is std out or std err?) and other items from the program, firefox in this case. But today I notice that bash just opens the program and goes to a new prompt, e.g. me@box:~$… >>> More
How to debug a .bash_profile

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I was updating my .bash_profile, and unfortunetly I made a few updates and now I am getting: env: bash: No such file or directory env: bash: No such file or directory env: bash: No such file or directory env: bash: No such file or directory env: bash: No such file or directory -bash: tar: command… >>> More
Every command fails with "command not found" after changing .bash_profile?

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I was updating my .bash_profile, and unfortunetly I made a few updates and now I am getting: env: bash: No such file or directory env: bash: No such file or directory env: bash: No such file or directory env: bash: No such file or directory env: bash: No such file or directory -bash: tar: command… >>> More
Is there any fundamental difference between piping in mac and linux?

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
ps -e | grep bash sample output from a linux machine: 1128 pts/14 00:00:00 bash 7491 pts/7 00:00:00 bash 12651 pts/14 00:00:00 bash 16145 pts/2 00:00:00 bash sample output from a mac machine: 58352 ttys000 0:00.09 login -pfl username /bin/bash -c exec -la bash /bin/bash 58353 ttys000… >>> More
why is $0 set to -bash?

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
First login process name seems to be set to "-bash", but if I subshell then it becomes "bash". for example: root@nowere:~# echo $0 -bash root@nowere:~# bash root@nowere:~# echo $0 bash -bash is causing some scripts to fail, such as . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule exec /usr/share/debconf/frontend… >>> More