README for follow

USE

follow is a quite simple program using inotify for following a file, e.g. a logfile in which a server writes. It has the same effect like tail -f on a file, but it echoes the whole file before starting to follow, and it's very small.

It was originally written as "glue" between the file-oriented IRC client ii and a perl script so you could follow the chat in the perl script by opening a pipe like this:

open(CHAT,"follow out|");

By reading and writing raw bytes, it may be used with any encoding.

If you use follow on your console, simply stop it via CTRL-C (^C), like tail -f

COMPILING

$ make follow

INSTALLING

# install follow /usr/local/bin

COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS

-t : Produce timestamps after every newline being written as last character (newlines within a larger block of data written at once are not timestamped)

TIMESTAMPS ON STDIN DATA

If you want to add timestamps to data delivered on stdin, you may want to use timelogger