command to show updates to files
 

Folks, do anybody knows a command like 'less', but that automatically show updates to the content of the file? I want to see 'real time' the change of the content of some file...

I thought that the parameter '-R' (repaint) of 'less' would do this, but I tested and nothing...

thanx by the attention folks...

[ ]'s

It depends on what do you mean.

If what you want is to see how contents is being added to a file (for example, to monitorize a log file), you can use tail. for example, in an xterm you could do:

There are variants like mtail that can use colors and other features.

that`s perfect

thanx pretty much!

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. If you are talking about a log file that has data appended onto the end of it, then a tail -f would show the data being appended. Otherwise you would probably have to write a script that slept for a period of time then awoke to check the last modified time of file, I haven't tested the following, but something like,

touch /tmp/compare_time
do while (1)
sleep 30
find /log_dir -name "file_name" -newer /tmp/compare_time
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
touch -m /tmp/compare_time
less /log_dir/file_name
fi
done

Would not the command "watch" do this job?