NAME
since - display content of a file since the last time
SYNOPSIS
since [-hnqvx] files
DESCRIPTION
since is similar to tail since it also displays the tail of a file.
However since displays only the data which has been added since the
last time since was run. If since has not been run before the entire
file is displayed. since is useful for watching over log files.
EXAMPLE
since /var/log/apache/{access,error}_log > /dev/null
lynx --dump http://localhost/ > /dev/null
since /var/log/apache/{access,error}_log
OPTIONS
-h Print a terse help message.
-n Do not update the .since file which keeps track of file growth.
-q Decrease the verbosity of the output.
-v Increase the verbosity of the output.
-x Exclude files with compressed extensions.
FILES
.since
File recording the length of the files displayed previously.
The location of the file can be set by using the SINCE
environment variable, for example export SINCE=
/var/log/sincefile will tell since to use the file
/var/log/sincefile. If the SINCE environment variable has not
been set since will use the HOME environment variable and store
the information in the file .since in the directory pointed to
by the variable. If neither the SINCE nor the HOME variable are
set since will use the file /tmp/since.
BUGS
since will break when used across NFS on architectures which have
different st_* field sizes. since uses the inode of a file as its key,
if that inode is recycled since might get confused. since is not
particularly efficient when storing the stat() information, but should
work reasonably well unless you plan to look at thousands of files.
Functionality equivalent to since can probably be achieved with a
number of trivial shell scripts.
COPYING
since may only be used, distributed and modified in accordance with the
terms of the GPL (GNU General Public License) as published by the FSF
(Free Software Foundation).
SEE ALSO
tail(1), stat(2).