# Guided Exercise: Which Tool Actually Answers the Question?

This is a paper exercise — commit to an answer before checking it in the Lab.

## Your task

For each situation, name the ONE command (or short pipeline) you'd reach for first:

1. You want to see just the last 20 lines of a 50,000-line log file.
2. You want to know how many lines in a file contain the word "timeout."
3. You want to watch a log file update live while a process is running.
4. You want to see a file's full contents but it's too long for one screen and you want to
   scroll through it interactively.

## A worked shape to check yourself against

1. `tail -n 20 file.log`
2. `grep -c timeout file.log`
3. `tail -f file.log`
4. `less file.log`

Notice: `cat` would technically "work" for #4 too, but it dumps everything at once with no way
to scroll back — `less` is the actual right tool once a file is longer than one screen.

## Instructor Notes

**Facilitation:** Item 4 is worth discussing explicitly — "it works" isn't the same bar as
"it's the right tool for this situation," and that distinction matters more as commands compose
into real troubleshooting workflows.

**Approximate timing:** 8-10 minutes live discussion; 5 minutes self-paced.