I use TextPad for my routine log file viewing. I have not used UltraEdit enough to have a good basis for comparison between the two tools. Those two, plus EditPlus, are probably the three most popular Windows tools of this category.
TextEdit has a nice line bookmarking feature. You can search for a particular string, such as a certain Web page, and highlight all of the lines that contain that keyword with bookmarks. You can delete all the bookmarked lines or all the non-bookmaked lines to reduce the amount you have to sift though to find the information you want. For example, if you are trying to trace a common path through the site that led to a particular error, you can bookmark all the lines with ..gif and .jpg in them, then delete those lines (temporarily of course), so you can better focus on the pages that matter. However, for very large files, such as 1 GB or greater, I am not sure what the best solution is. I had a large Cognos EIS dataset that I needed to edit last week. TextEdit and EditPlus wouldn't even open it. UltraEdit opened it after a long time, but the program was almost completely unresponsive. (I have 1 GB of RAM installed.) I ended up using HJSplit to break the file up, then I edited it in TextPad, then I reversed the split. I just tried out these tail programs people mentioned. mTail crashed on me after I loaded in too much, but it was quick. Tail for Win32 is nice. It opened the end of the 1.5 GB file very quickly (which was the part I was interested in). However, it seems to lack documentation so I am not sure if it does anything more than view the last X number of bytes is a file. For example, I cannot seem to control how many lines it shows. But it is probably a good solution for monitoring log files. With these other text editing programs, whenever the log file changes in the background, you get alerted and are asked whether or not to reload the entire file, which can be slow for large files over the network. With Tail, you can easily monitor the end of the log file for changes. If anybody knows of any programs capable of handling 1 GB files with ease, I would be curious if there is anything better than Tail for Win32. -Mike Chabot ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Discover CFTicket - The leading ColdFusion Help Desk and Trouble Ticket application http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=48 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:4:194571 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
