"xtail" watches the growth of files. It is similar to "tail -f", but may
watch many files at once. The syntax is:
xtail pathname ...
"xtail" will monitor all the specified files and display information added
to them. If you specify a directory name, "xtail" will watch all the
files in that directory - including those created after "xtail" was
started. If you give "xtail" a name which doesn't exist, it will watch
for the creation of the named entry. My favorite usage is:
xtail /usr/spool/uucp/.Log/*
"xtail" is distributed with a configuration for SCO XENIX. It has also
been tested on MIPS System V. I took a shot at BSD portability. The
main difference is how the "directory" support library is accessed.
To build "xtail":
- edit the definitions in "xtail.h"
- run a "make"
A version of "xtail" was originally posted in alt.sources a few months
back. There are several improvements between this version and the
original:
- the ability to watch directories
- the ability to watch entries which don't exist yet
- the recently changed files display (given upon SIGINT)
- performance improvements
- portability improvements
Many of these changes were suggested by David Dykstra <dwd@cbnewsc.ATT.COM>.
The idea of keeping files open and use fstat() rather than stat() was
suggested by changes by another poster (sorry, I lost the article so I
can't provide credit). However, that version kept *everything* open, and
that just eats too many entries in the file table for me. You can tweak
the values in "xtail.h" to optimize the response/load characteristics of
"xtail".
Chip Rosenthal
<chip@vector.Dallas.TX.US>
@(#) README 2.1 89/07/26 19:16:34
