On Fri, 28 Apr 2000, Raider wrote about, Re: And something about less:
> On "Re: And something about less" Richard Adams said on Apr 27:
> > I never said i did, however what you describe is hard to understand in the
> > terms you use.
>
> I can't comment on that. My problems seem less than usual.
> And English is not my native language.
Well it is my native langauge but considering i have been speaking Dutch
all my working life i seem to forget the grammer of it all.
Anyways, we are getting off topic with that, so lets just start all over
again, as i now think i know what you were asking.
However less WILL do what you want, it would seem i was missing the point
you were trying to make, after reading the replys from others i see what is
meant.
So if i see it correctly, less will show text being updated to a zero
lenght file, at least it does here.
Senario.
ls -al pipo
-rw-r--r-- 1 pa3gcu pa3gcu 0 Apr 28 15:23 pipo
less pipo
The screen clears and at the bottom we get;
pipo line ?/? (END)
Now i hit the {shift-F} key.
Waiting for data... (interrupt to abort)
Appiers.
In another xterm i type
echo "This is an update." > pipo
back to less and what do i see.
This is an update.
Wallah, it works.
>
> That zero_lenght_soon_to_be_larger file is the output of
> stdout or stderr of some programs. Not sure about closing. It's
> something like sendmail -vq > file. I have no idea if the file is
> closed after every line or after sendmail quits. But why does this
> work fine if the file has one line, or any other number of lines, and
> it doesn't if the file _initially_ is zero?
> Take my example. If the file didn't exist, or it was created
> let's say with touch, than less won't reread it. If the file had
> something in it than ^R works just fine, no matter weather sendmail is
> on or not.
Yes it does work use F.
>
> > 2) less does not constanly read a file, it loads the complete file into
I should have seen what io wrote was not entirly true, 'F' invokes less to
keep reading the file, even if its ZERO lengh.
> > NO not sarcasum, fact, i consider (if i now understabd properly) that you
> > are expecting a child to do a mans work, by that i mean you are using the
> > wrong program, why use less, do it another way, there are so many
> > possablitys.
>
> And what is that man that will do child's work?
less doing the work other programs can do beter. Use ps aux to see the
difference in memory used, 'less' uses MORE memory than tail -f.
Or it did here when i looked, the difference is 0.3% of total memory.
less used 0.9% tail -f 0.6%
>
> > No one can solve a problem when there is not a problem to solve.
So now by saying the following i am NOT being sarcastic, there seems not to
be a problem, or do the others who have repled to your question have it
wrong also.??
> Errr... not really. This is a limitation of less. Which
> isn't in those README files. tail can refresh one zero lenght file
> that has growth. Less should too. I can't see your logic with that
> mumbo jumbo about memory and open/close files. Normally less should
> see that the file has changed and print that on screen.
Less does here with me.
>
> Raider
> --
> ``Liberate tu-temet ex inferis''
--
Regards Richard
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://people.zeelandnet.nl/pa3gcu/
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