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Last Update: Thu Feb 18 18:17:43 +0000 2010

File::Tail - Tailing files in Ruby

Description

This is a small ruby library that allows it to "tail" files in Ruby, including following a file, that still is growing like the unix command ‘tail -f’ can.

Author

Florian Frank flori@ping.de

License

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation: www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

Download

The latest version of File::Tail (file-tail) can be found at

rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=393

Online Documentation should be located at

file-tail.rubyforge.org

Usage

File::Tail is a module in the File class. A lightweight class interface for logfiles can be seen under File::Tail::Logfile.

Direct extension of File objects with File::Tail works like that:

 File.open(filename) do |log|
   log.extend(File::Tail)
   log.interval = 10
   log.backward(10)
   log.tail { |line| puts line }
 end

It‘s also possible to mix File::Tail in your own File classes (see also File::Tail::Logfile):

 class MyFile < File
   include File::Tail
 end
 log = MyFile.new("myfile")
 log.interval = 10
 log.backward(10)
 log.tail { |line| print line }

The forward/backward method returns self, so it‘s possible to chain methods together like that:

 log.backward(10).tail { |line| puts line }

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