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Can I ask why not to just use tail? What benefit does this serve?
by notyourwork 16y ago
Can I ask why not to just use tail? What benefit does this serve?
- jfb 16y agoCan modern tails stop following and search back up the buffer? That's why I use less +F, personally.
- bretthoerner 16y agoMy only guess would be that you can search inside less if your terminal emulator doesn't support it.
- halfasleep 16y agoless allows you to stop and resume easily, without losing any of the output of your command (useful if you are watching the output of a process as well). Also less doesn't clutter the scrollback of your terminal with output from tail.
- joshcorbin 16y agoWide lines like from syslog, frequently you want one event per line and not to have wrapping occur. The -S switch to less is a boon here.
- justinlilly 16y agoWith less, you can do: less myfile.log &ERROR # filter out any line that doesn't match the regexp ERROR F # capital f enters follow mode Now you're tailing a log with a custom grep, which is retroactive on history as well.