Subject: Re: tail -f will not work with IIS generated log files
From: "Matthew Smith" <[email-masked]>
To: "Cygwin" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Textutils" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 01:14:11 -0500

> Bit of bummer because getting "tail" to monitor IIS was the VERY reason I
> downloaded and installed www.CyGWin.com .  I'm wondering:
>
>  1) When might someone fix this?

It will get fixed as soon as you submit a patch for it!  Seriously.  All of
the cygwin people work on a volunteer basis.  We all have lives/jobs to
contend with, and contribute to cygwin when we can.  If you have a feature
you must have, implement it.  It's that simple.

>(extend "tail" to deal with the IIS log
> tricks, and thus making a more powerful "tail")  tail doesn't display so
is
> surely stripping out pre-allocated buffer space at the end (perhaps
because,
> in MS-DOS, it's preceded by a ^Z), but not going back to see if that space
> it skipped has changed, or just not noticing any changes because , as
Robert
> suggested, it's probably just looking at the size of the file. What it
> probably should be looking at first is the mod-date, and when that
changes,
> continue outputting it's output at the point where it found no more valid
> text, NOT necessarily the end of the file.  This minor redesign could then
> be folded back into the Gnu sources, for a more powerful tail for
everyone.

I agree, it sounds simple. I eagerly await your changes.

cheers,
-Matt Smith
cygwin textutils maintainer

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