I forgot to mention that I normally use "tail -r" which is in v7:
* Type 'r' means in lines in reverse order from end * (for -r, default is entire buffer ) tail is not in v6. The 32V version and its fork 3BSD had tail but did not have the -r feature. 4.0BSD did have it (Nov 10 1980): Specifying .B r causes tail to print lines from the end of the file in reverse order. The default for .B r is to print the entire file this way.