note
BrowserUk
<p>Six or so years ago, I started out using <code>tail -f log</code> to help debug an hp/ux-based system that used a central log of communications with many remote systems. I had to re-write the system <code>tail</code> utility so that it followed the logfile by name rather than file handle, as the logs cycled whenever they reached a particular size. That quickly progressed to being filtered using <code>grep</code> to just certain key events.
<p>With a scrolling log of many, concurrent communications, it was difficult to keep track of the one or two of interest. So that got fed into <code>awk</code>, which filtered only the latest event for each machine, sorted them by machine id, discarded those that had completed, and displayed the most recent 60 (the biggest screen size available).
<p>Slowly, with the addition of a few ansi escape sequences to clear the screen and highlight the latest changes, the one-time debugging aid became more useful (current and immediate) than the system reporting tool and rapidly became the tool of choice for many of us on the project.
<p>There was talk of re-writing it into something easier to maintain that Awk(ward), but an experiment with REXX showed that it was just too slow for the purpose. Someone did suggest Perl (version 4 was on the systems). I took one look at the couple of example scripts that were available and rejected the idea out of hand as "write-only line noise".
<p>In my defense, I'd never seen Perl before and none of the unix people put up much of an argument. I'd also put a considerable amount of effort into learning <code>awk</code> etc. in order to get the (working) tool to where it was, I was kind of proud of it.
<p>When I left the project, it was still tool of choice. The last view I have of the lab is a photograh one of the guys emailed me. Taken at a milestone celebration some months later, there are at least a couple of copyings running on the screens in the background.
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<div>Examine what is said, not who speaks.</div>
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham<br />
"Think for yourself!" - [Abigail-II|Abigail] <br />
"Memory, processor, disk in that order on the hardware side. Algorithm, algorithm, algorithm on the code side." - [tachyon]<br />
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