[PLUG] Using less on a growing file

Bill Barry bill at billbarry.org
Thu Sep 25 21:21:53 UTC 2014


On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 2:16 PM, Tim Wescott <tim at wescottdesign.com> wrote:
> Is there a way to use less, or a less-like viewer, to view a growing
> file such that as the file grows, paging down will get me more and more
> content?
>
> As far as I can tell, just running 'less myfile.txt', when myfile.txt is
> being written to by another app, seems to just take a snapshot of
> myfile.txt -- I want to be able to look at the full extent of the file
> AS IT GROWS, to monitor ongoing long computations to see how they're
> doing.

less itself works that way.   shift-g will reveal anything new added
to myfile.txt after you opened it with less.

Bill



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